The Paper Crane Confession
by trufflesque
Summary: It all started with a routine physical examination. Eventual KakaSaku.
1. Inappropriate shoes!

Disclaimer: This disclaimer will be used for this chapter and any chapters that succeed it. I do not own Naruto, nor am I making a profit from this.

AN: I wanted to try my hand at a KakaSaku, so here it is. Know that I'm not working exactly from a planned outline. I'm just sort of making things up as I go along, even though I have several ideas in my head. This will be multi-chaptered. Unbeta'd – all spelling/grammar errors are mine.

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When Haruno Sakura was hungry, she wasn't the kind of person to just drop everything and go have a snack. Usually, she was either too busy or too apathetic to actually put in the effort. When she was younger, she didn't mind getting up and getting some ramen or fruit, but now that she was a spry eighteen-year old medic-nin with a schedule crammed full with broken bones and surgeries, she rarely found the time to eat.

At first, she had managed to sneak in a quick bite of an apple or something between patients or paperwork, but as time progressed and she was given more responsibilities, she found it easier not to bother at all. Even her lunch breaks found her sitting with Shizune and Tsunade, helping to file medical reports while choking down a crappy sandwich she'd made in a rush that morning. Things were just too hectic these days. Ranks among the elite shinobi of Konoha were thinning, and they needed skilled ninja to protect the village and bring in some income from missions and the like.

Of course, that meant that medic-nin were also dwindling, since genin and chuunin felt more obligated to protect the village by striving to be elite jounin and ANBU rather than help take care of injuries and perform life-saving operations.

Her stomach growled and she sighed into the darkness of her apartment. She hadn't even bothered to turn on the lights – or go to her bedroom, for that matter.

Suddenly, there came a sharp knock on her apartment door. Sakura groaned and sank even lower on her couch, her body turning over slowly so she somehow managed to press her face into the cheap throw pillow Naruto gave her as an apartment-warming gift. She didn't want company. It was 10:37 at night! A visitor this late meant it was either Ino (being obnoxious as usual), or a nurse from the hospital coming to request Sakura's help with some emergency surgery or ear infection or whatnot.

Sakura did not want to go back to the hospital. She'd just gotten _home_ from the hospital. This wasn't fair! She needed rest too!

She waited, slumped over on the couch, hoping whoever was calling on her just _left_. As it stood, even if she fell asleep this very moment, she would get _just_ _enough_ sleep to manage the next day, but if she was kept up… well, woe betide any snotty patients she would receive.

There was another loud knock.

_Maybe they can sense my breathing,_ Sakura reasoned. _I'm like a trapped animal._ As if it would help, she began to hold her breath, and she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to silently will away her late-night visitor.

What did she do to deserve this? Today was supposed to be her day off! But since they needed someone to assist Shizune with a delicate operation, she agreed to come in. Then, what was supposed to be a three or four hour delay in her plans of _doing absolutely nothing_ became an almost ten hour shift. Right after the surgery, Tsunade needed help finding and filing some misplaced paperwork, and also to find Tonton because she'd run off after smelling something particularly sweet. After she'd found the paperwork and filed it away, and found Tonton (who was in the Hospital cafeteria, trying to eat the raspberry ice cream), Sakura thought that was it – but then half a dozen nurses found her and decided they needed help with simple exams and procedures.

Suddenly, a floorboard creaked and Sakura shot up from her crumpled position.

"Oh – hey, forehead!"

_Urgh._ "Um… hi, Ino."

"I hope you don't mind, I let myself in." The blonde kunoichi crouched on the floor near Sakura, peering at her in the moonlight. "Why the hell are you sitting in the dark, Sakura?" Ino asked, amused.

"Shut up. I'm trying to sleep."

"But it's only quarter-to-eleven."

Sakura glared at her. "It's ten-forty, and I'll have you know I need all the sleep I can get."

There was a pause. "You didn't forget it's my birthday, right?"

Crap. Sakura _did_ forget. She pressed her hands to her face and massaged her temples. "Sorry, Ino," she said after a moment. "I got held up at the hospital."

Another pause. "I thought you had the day off. I thought you _booked_ it off so we could go out tonight."

"…Ino, I'm sorry – "

"You just can't say no to people, can you?" Ino interrupted. She sounded amused, but Sakura knew that was probably just a cover. Your best friend missing your birthday was like having a finger amputated. Or so she assumed. She'd seen how dejected people looked after having their digits cut off, so she assumed it kind of felt the same.

"Tell you what," Ino said cheerfully, springing to her feet and trying to pull a limp and reluctant Sakura up off the couch. "You come out with me tonight – just for an hour, I promise – and we'll call it even. Actually… you could also buy me this yukata I saw at this shop the other day…"

Sakura chewed on her bottom lip, weighing the pros and cons of going versus staying home. On one hand, if she went, she could be assured that her friendship with Ino would last just a little bit longer (even though it probably wasn't in any real danger in the first place), but if she stayed she would be able to get a decent night of rest before waking up at the crack of dawn and heading off to open people up and sew them shut again. The latter certainly was more appealing than spending time with a drunk Ino.

But Sakura chose to go out. She was _eighteen_. She needed to loosen up, probably.

"Great!" Ino clapped her hands and pulled Sakura towards her bedroom. "We'll just get you changed! It's great, we found this little bar we've never been to before, and Shikamaru and Chouji are waiting for us…"

"They're there too?" Sakura blinked as Ino turned on the light. "I thought it was just a girls' night out kind of thing."

"Please. Shikamaru's birthday was yesterday. It's like a joint celebration. I came to find you because you didn't come to my house at seven, and when I called your house at nine I didn't get an answer…"

As Ino whirled around to open the closet, Sakura caught a glimpse of one her shiny silver earrings. She'd been wearing those things since they were put in teams. Shikamaru and Chouji wore them too. It was like the Ino-Shika-Chou bond of friendship or something. Sakura kind of wished she had something she could share with the rest of her team besides that old photo of when they were younger and not so… well, broken up. Everybody who belonged to something – some group or club, or whatever – usually had something to show for it. ANBU had those tattoos she'd only glimpsed in surgery. Ino and her team had their silver earrings.

"You should wear the black dress," Ino suggested, tossing the garment at the pink-haired kunoichi over her shoulder. Sakura caught it effortlessly and stared at it in her hand. It was the tiniest thing…

"Ino, I'm not wearing this," Sakura said evenly. "I bought this when I was fifteen. It's too short and too tight."

Ino shrugged. "Fine. Give it back."

She continued probing Sakura's closet, finally giving up after each dress she pulled out was deemed "too small" or "too tight".

"Hell, Sakura, I know they say to leave a little to the imagination, but give them _something_ to work with!"

Sakura blinked. What the heck? "Ino… I'm not trying to hook a date. I'm celebrating your eighteenth birthday. Okay? I don't want to look like a hooker."

Ino rolled her eyes. "You won't. Everybody knows you and loves you and you won't lose respect just because you show a little cleavage every now and then."

"Oh, yeah, right. Half the people I treat never remember my name. They can only remember me as that girl with the pink hair." Sakura crossed her arms over her chest and ignored the aggravated sigh that she elicited from Ino across the room.

"Well, whatever. Let's just get you in something decent and go out, okay? We're missing my special day."

-

The outfit Sakura picked out was remarkably modest. It consisted of a skirt she bought last year (but had never worn) that came down to her knees and was white with some sky blue flower patterns. The top was just a navy blue t-shirt that was actually a little looser than she remembered. Pair that with some slightly feminine sandals with a slight heel and she had an outfit Ino had deemed "good enough".

While that may have been true, Ino had lied about the length of the outing. Instead of being back by midnight, as she had expected, Sakura found herself still sitting in the bar with Ino, Chouji, and Shikamaru until 2am. She looked around and saw empty glasses littering the table.

Ino was drunk, as expected, while Chouji seemed to have downed the same number of drinks and remained as sober as ever. Shikamaru was nursing his second cocktail of some kind (Sakura couldn't remember the name of it), and in the meantime she quietly sipped her water.

Sakura never found herself all that attracted to alcohol. It tasted foul and it caused all sorts of problems for people. It became both the reason for and the bane of some people's sad existences.

"You should try Sex on the Beach," Ino slurred across the table. "You'll like it, I promise."

Sakura, being almost virginal in both sexual and alcohol-related ways, blushed crimson at the suggestion. "Ino, I don't think that's a good…"

"But it's fruity!" Ino interrupted. "It's got, um… pineapple juice, cranberry juice, and… something else. You can't even taste the alcohol! Oh shoot, that's right. Pineapple juice, cranberry juice, and some alcohol. There you go. I knew there was something I forgot."

_Oh. It's a drink._

She shook her head. "No thanks, Ino. I'm doing annual physical exams tomorrow – er, today, actually, and I'd rather not have a hangover while I ask people to _turn and cough_." Sakura tried to show her resolve by swigging back the rest of her water, but she suddenly had a vision of her drunken self trying to take someone's temperature rectally and she choked.

As her spluttering coughs died down, Shikamaru ordered another cocktail – a Screwdriver – and wondered if it was too much trouble to stay out the rest of the night or if he should go home. If he went home, he could sleep… Well, that settled it. After he finished this last drink, he would amble on home and sleep until noon. Chouji should probably leave soon too, or the bar tab would be too high…

"You can't get drunk after just _one_ Sex on the Beach," Ino was arguing.

"Sorry, but no."

"Please? Just one for my birthday?"

"I can't…"

"What's wrong, Sakura? I thought you liked to please people."

Sakura could have sworn she twitched. She stood up. "Well, I'm certainly having fun," she declared, falsely cheerful. "I really should be going now, though. Those prostates aren't going to check themselves tomorrow."

As they watched her stomp out of the bar, Shikamaru turned to Ino and sighed. "It may be your birthday, but you can't just say those kinds of things to people," he grumbled.

"Well, she should try it at least once! If she doesn't like it, she doesn't have to try it again!"

Chouji downed his sake. "I think you're missing the point, Ino," he said, and the look on Shikamaru's face suggested that he agreed with his chubby friend.

Ino shrugged. "Well, whatever."

-

Sakura had every intention of storming home and being angry at Ino for the rest of the night. But as she walked, her feet became more and more heavy and listless, and she found herself practically dragging her feet to her apartment.

Plus, she wasn't sure if she was that angry with Ino anymore.

_Am I a prude?_

Sakura couldn't help but wonder if she was denying herself something that she, as an eighteen-year old, should probably experiment with if only to gain some age and experience. Everybody her age frequented pubs between missions, that was nothing new. She just wondered if she was the only one who didn't.

That thought made her feel distinctly alien amongst her peers. While normal teenagers spent time doing "teenager"-like things such as drinking and smoking and being immature while they still had a couple of years to use their age as an excuse, Sakura was doing the exact opposite. She was a full-fledged medic-nin. If she wasn't out on a mission, she was either expending her chakra to heal meager flesh wounds, or sewing up a patient after removing a damaged kidney, or completing a mountain of paperwork that she later had to put in folders and file away. And when she wasn't doing _any_ of that, she liked to sleep at home or curl up and read a book.

As a result, her apartment was almost continuously filthy, with clothes lying strewn on the floor and cheap dishes scattered on the kitchen counter with food dried to them. Sakura sighed as she shut the door behind her, not even bothering to lock it. She had two or three days' worth of dirty dishes and probably a week's worth of dirty laundry at the very least – none of which she really wanted to deal with _ever_. Hell, it was probably easier just to throw everything out and buy new dishes and new clothes. But she didn't really have the expenses for that.

Sakura wasn't exactly sure how it happened, but she was sure she became the messiest kunoichi in Konoha. Her mother was always a clean person – almost to an obsessive degree – so that _should_ have transferred over to her, right?

She took one look into her bedroom with the rumpled, twisted bedspread and the miniature pile of laundry on the floor and decided that she would sleep on the couch.

She'd been sleeping on the couch a lot these days, it seemed. This past week she'd slept on the couch about four times, not including tonight. It was just easier.

Oddly enough, for someone so tired, she managed to pull up enough energy to get a blanket from the hallway closet and wrap it around herself before retiring to the couch. As soon as her head hit that cheap throw pillow, she had fallen asleep.

-

The only problem with sleeping on her couch was that she didn't have her alarm clock to wake her up. It was nearly noon by the time she groggily opened her eyes, and immediately panic was set in. She was supposed to be at the hospital by nine! She was almost three hours late!

She managed to find the individual pieces of her nurse outfit scattered throughout her bedroom and hastily threw them together so she was ready to go. Her skirt was lopsided and she couldn't find her hat, but that was fine. "Tsunade-sama is going to _kill_ me," she mumbled to herself, thrusting a foot into her sandal. Wrong foot. She switched them and tried again. _What? How can it still be the wrong foot?_

Upon closer inspection, she discovered that they were indeed the same foot – both the left one. They were just from two similar pairs of sandals.

She searched for the right foot from either pair but was unable to find them for some reason. Having no other resort, Sakura slipped the sandals from last night onto her feet – the ones with the heels. They were probably the last things she should have been wearing to the hospital, but she really had no other choice. Damn elusive sandals.

Soon afterwards, she was out the door and racing to the hospital.

-

"Sakura…" Tsunade's voice was one of warning as Sakura burst into her mentor's office, looking for her stack of medical files. She was sure she'd placed them on her desk…

Sakura was practically breathless. "I know, I know, Tsunade-sama, I'm late!" she cried. "Reprimand me later! Where the hell are my files?"

Tsunade smirked. "Shizune is taking care of them. You know, you had an appointment at nine-thirty. Did you forget you had physical exams to do today?"

"Ah, no, I didn't, actually," Sakura mumbled, blushing faintly. How embarrassing. "I went out last night and fell asleep on the couch…"

"You didn't drink, did you?"

"Of course not! I had water. I just stayed out later than I planned."

Tsunade paused, looking Sakura up and down. It wasn't that she didn't believe her apprentice; it was just unsettling because Sakura wasn't the kind of person to show up three hours late for no reason. She couldn't help but wonder if maybe something a little more serious was going on.

"Anyway, Tsunade-sama…" Sakura rubbed her right foot on the back of her left leg anxiously. "Since Shizune-san is taking care of my patients today…"

"Oh, right!" Tsunade pointed to Shizune's desk. "You can do the ones she was supposed to do today. They should be in the top right drawer…"

Sakura slid over and opened the drawer Tsunade said contained medical files. There they were; a neat little bundle of a dozen or so files tied together with _pink string_. Tsunade chuckled. "Shizune thought the pink string was a cute addition," she mentioned off-handedly, and then dismissed the statement with a wave of her hand. "Well, whatever. You've got a lot of jounin and ANBU coming in today for their routine physicals. Call me if you need anything."

"I will, Tsunade-sama."

"Oh, and one more thing…"

Sakura turned at the doorway, raising an eyebrow in curiosity. Tsunade was staring at her, her elbows on the desk and her fingers interlaced just under her chin. "Am I overworking you?" she asked casually, a hint of concern lacing her voice.

"Um, no, not particularly."

"That doesn't sound like a definitive answer, Sakura."

"I know. No… I don't feel overworked at all, Tsunade-sama."

"You'll let me know if you feel you need a break, right? I could always call in a favour from one of the retired medics, you know."

Sakura paused and then nodded with a cheerful smile on her face. "Yes, I'll be sure to let you know… but I'm okay, really." No, she wasn't. She _did_ feel overworked, but unfortunately she was the kind of person who didn't like to complain about those kinds of things. After all, Tsunade worked around the clock like a mad woman; why couldn't Sakura?

Tsunade's grim look faded into an almost cocky smile. "By the way… nice shoes. Probably slightly inappropriate, but nice."

-

Sakura tried to will away every thought in her head – all of her embarrassment, her self-doubt – everything but her professionalism, and walked into the clinic area.

Another nurse looked up at Sakura and smiled. "Ah, Sakura-san," she greeted kindly. "You look… taller."

_It's the heels._ Sakura gave a forced half-grin back at the woman. "Otsune-san," she nodded her head. She liked Sakagami Otsune very much. She was a kind woman in her mid-thirties who was very generous and always smiling and never had a bad word to say to anyone. When Sakura was new at the hospital, she was the one who made her feel welcome and at home.

"You're doing Shizune-san's appointments, are you not?" Otsune asked cheerfully.

"Yeah."

"Well, two for eleven o'clock and eleven-thirty cancelled because you weren't here, but your ten o'clock is. He came in just a few moments ago."

Sakura was puzzled. What? "I'm sorry… did you say… my ten o'clock?" Sakura looked at the clock hanging on the wall. "It's twelve-thirty…"

"Yes, well, he said he couldn't make it in at ten because he was reading the latest chapter of his book and got carried away." Otsune gave a light shrug and turned back to her files. "He's in the third exam room."

Sakura stiffened. The lateness… the excuse… _it had to be_…

"Thanks Otsune-san," Sakura mumbled, and began to walk quickly towards exam room three with her own stack of files. When she swung open the door, she was not at all surprised at who she saw sitting on the exam table.

Hair unkempt, hitai-ate discarded, medical gown substituted for his usual navy uniform and green vest, and mask firmly in place… it was her former sensei, Hatake Kakashi. He was just sitting there, reading his little book. He barely looked up when she entered the room.

Then, as the door clicked shut, he peered up over the top of his book. "Yo," he said simply, waving his hand at her. He looked her up and down carefully, his eyes stopping momentarily to look at her shoes. "I didn't realize today was 'naughty nurse' day."

Sakura pursed her lips into a thin line. Of all the people she had to see today, it had to be him.

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AN: Stay tuned. All kinds of feedback appreciated.


	2. Is that what I think it is?

AN: At the time I started writing this chapter, I was unemployed. However, that is no longer the case! Hooray for me! Unbeta'd, all spelling/grammar errors are mine.

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"You're as bad as Jiraiya," Sakura grumbled, moving to sit at the small white desk beside the examination table. She paused for a moment, an odd look crossing her face. "Oh god, I hope he's not coming in here today…"

Kakashi chuckled. "I don't think I'm as bad as Jiraiya," he mused, dog-earing a page in his book and placing it down beside him.

Sakura stared at him with a frown on her face. She was happy to see him, really. It was always nice to see old teammates. But did it have to be under _this_ context? They hadn't spoken for months. She would have preferred bumping into Kakashi at the market or at the bookstore, not here. He was her former sensei, he was thirty-two, and he was sitting in nothing but a medical gown in front of her. It was too _awkward_.

She'd always looked at her sensei with a kind of cool admiration before. After all, he was the famous Copy-nin Kakashi. He was one of the strongest ninja in the village! It was hard for young ninja _not_ to want to be like him, and even harder for those under his tutelage. But as much as she respected him, she didn't think she would be able to complete his physical examination without blushing a deep red the entire time.

Sakura had no problem dealing with people, normally. She could poke, prod, squeeze, and examine to her heart's content because she found it easier to view her patients as examples of human anatomy. However, when a familiar face is put on that example of human anatomy, suddenly things become much harder.

"Anyway… um… Kakashi-sensei," she gave him a half-smile as she began flipping through the stack of folders. "How have you been these days?"

He shrugged. "No worse for wear. Will this take long?"

"It's nice to see you too," she sighed, and began flipping through the files for a second time. There was a rather awkward moment of silence as she furiously checked each file. "I can't believe this," she murmured after a few more seconds, turning to face the tall jounin seated at the table. "Your file isn't in here."

"A tragic loss," Kakashi agreed unsympathetically.

"I'm going to have to go find it," Sakura said, getting up from the desk. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

Kakashi's hand suddenly shot out and gripped her arm tightly, effectively stopping her from moving any further. "There's no need," he said stiffly. "It's just my family history and medical history, right?"

"Well, yeah…"

"We can probably do this without it. I can tell you everything you need to know."

Sakura gave him an odd look. "Why are you so anxious to get out of here, sensei?" she demanded, jerking her arm out of his grasp. "Got a busy day of intense reading planned?"

"Oh, you know. Places to go, people to accost."

"Well, I'm afraid I'm going to have to _accost_ you for a little longer. I really need that file."

Kakashi gave her a defeated look. There really was no stopping her, was there? It wasn't as though his medical file was particularly interesting. As her hand closed over the doorknob to the exam room, he called out to her again. "Sakura, if you leave the room, there's no guarantee I'll be here when you get back."

She paused and threw him a glare over her shoulder. "Fine," she said evenly, releasing the doorknob and walking towards him again. "I'll just fill in everything later. First we have to get your height and weight…"

She ushered him over to the scale on the far side of the room and he tentatively stood on it, his back facing her. She was glad he had the mind to tie the drawstrings on his hospital gown tightly. She wasn't sure if she could handle seeing her former sensei's bare backside. Things were awkward enough already, and they would only get worse as the exam progressed. She adjusted the measuring devices on the scale and studied it for a moment. "You are… just under six feet tall," she murmured, crossing her arms. "And a hundred and fifty pounds."

"A hundred and forty-eight, last time I checked," Kakashi corrected lightly.

Sakura gave him a wry look. "Poor you, you're getting fat."

He just gave a low chuckle and made his way back to the exam table. "Well, that takes care of the first part," he said, hoisting himself up on the table and sitting down, watching her. "What's next?"

"Well, at some point I'm going to have to ask you to take your mask off, so we might as well get that over with," Sakura said, and then stood in front of him expectantly. When he didn't move a muscle, she sighed. "Sometime today, please."

"I'd rather not. Can we skip this part?"

"What, and get right to the part where I examine your – your – um…" Sakura decided to stop herself right then and there before she dug herself into an even deeper pit of shame and humiliation. As it went, she was in deep enough already having left her sentence hanging like that.

Kakashi's eyebrows shot into his hairline. "Examine my what?" he prompted casually, and Sakura shot him a dirty look, knowing fully well that he was just trying to embarrass her.

"Never mind," she mumbled, her cheeks getting red. "I'll go get my stethoscope."

Kakashi watched her with mild interest. Sakura certainly had grown up over the years. It was very easy to differentiate between the twelve-year old Sakura he had left in Tsunade's care and the eighteen-year old Sakura standing in front of him in that nurse outfit with her heeled sandals. For one thing, she had matured both mentally and physically. _Naughty nurse day indeed._

At the same time, however, there were many things about eighteen-year old Sakura that remained the same. Her tendency to blush easily, for example, hadn't changed. She also remained long-limbed and slender despite having wider hips and slightly fuller breasts (although not by much). But she had become smarter, sharper, and more responsible. And she wore those shoes very nicely.

Sakura turned and saw him staring at her feet rather blatantly for a second before he snapped his eyes back up to her face. She gave him a strange look. "The shoes _again_?" she asked, approaching him with the stethoscope in her hand. "Look, quit staring at my feet, Kakashi-sensei, you're starting to make me nervous. I'm not wearing these because it's 'naughty nurse' day…"

"I wasn't even aware it was an actual day. I lucked out, didn't I?"

"Ugh, there's no such day. I couldn't find my other shoes. That's all," Sakura said, shaking her head. "And if you keep staring, I'll end up getting so edgy I'll fall flat on my face."

He shrugged and looked away. "They look nice."

Sakura opened her mouth to say something, but she couldn't think of anything to say to that. She supposed she should thank him for the compliment, but for some reason it seemed borderline inappropriate. She wasn't exactly sure why. "Um, anyway… I'm going to check your lungs and heartbeat now…"

Kakashi hummed in response as Sakura pressed the metal chestpiece of the stethoscope to his chest through the cheap cotton of the gown and inserted the listening ends into her ears. "Breathe," she instructed.

"I am."

"Breathe _deeply_."

Kakashi complied however many times she asked, and turned his attention to the window. It was such a nice day outside. He was always more inclined to appreciate the fall, even though spring was far prettier in Konoha. He was a little startled out of his reverie when he felt her undoing the top drawstring on his gown.

"What are you doing?" he asked, vaguely concerned. For some reason, his mind couldn't comprehend the necessity of her actions.

Sakura gave him a _look_. "You don't just listen from the front, you listen from the back too. As it so happens, you tied this so tightly at the top," she said, and after a brief pause added, "I'm not even sure how you did that." For a moment she was inwardly giddy that she had managed to catch the great Kakashi off-guard. She took a quick glance at his back before pressing the cold metal to his skin. He flinched a little, but that was no surprise. Many people flinched when they were unexpectedly touched with something cold. It was nice to know that the almost-robotic copy ninja could be human at times.

"Breathe," she instructed again, and he did.

After a moment of careful listening, she sighed and pulled the stethoscope down around her neck. "Well, it seems you've got a bit of crackling. Have you been sick recently?"

"No…"

"Well, don't be surprised if you develop the sniffles in a few days."

Kakashi sighed. "That figures. I haven't been sick this year yet."

Sakura laughed softly and took his right arm in her hands. She silently and quickly checked his joints and flexibility in that arm before moving to the next to do the same. This portion of the exam moved fluidly and effortlessly. Kakashi was rather impressed with Sakura at this point; she certainly seemed to know what she was doing.

"Could you stand up and walk around?" she asked all of a sudden, stepping back to watch him. He slid off the table and casually sauntered around the room, his arms swinging lazily at his sides as he walked.

Sakura seemed to be mumbling something. "No limp… knees look good, ankles good…" She unconsciously let herself trail off as she watched his muscles flexing underneath his skin. Kakashi had rather nice legs. It was almost a pity that the standard male ninja uniform consisted of loose pants, a loose sweater, and a clunky green vest.

Kakashi stopped walking and turned to face her curiously. To be honest, he didn't like physical exams. This one was his first exam in about six years. He just didn't see the need to go see a medic unless he was in pain or something was clearly wrong, and even then he was a little hesitant. Most things he could take care of _himself_.

He stared at her for a moment and saw that her cheeks had darkened substantially, and she was deliberately avoiding his gaze. "Er… I guess we move onto the next part," Sakura said, clearing her throat nervously. She moved to the desk drawer and pulled a pair of latex gloves from the box inside.

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "And what part is that?"

"The… um…"

It was sort of amusing, watching her trip over her words like that.

Sakura finally met his stare with a rather embarrassed one of her own. "Uh… _that_ one," she mumbled, with a vague gesture of her hand towards him.

"That doesn't sound like a medical procedure to me," he said with a low chuckle, but she didn't return his flippant attitude. She let her eyes fall after that and he curiously followed her gaze… right to his groin.

"Oh," was all he could manage to say. "_That_ one."

"Yeah…" Sakura cleared her throat. She took slow, careful steps towards him and kept making vague gestures with her hand, a pained expression on her face. She was mentally kicking herself for how unprofessional she was being. Sure, she knew Kakashi personally, but she should still have been able to retain _some_ professionalism, right? But maybe it was that small measure of professionalism that was keeping her from running from the room in a panic because she was about to touch her former sensei's "naughty parts". Sakura swallowed hard. She could do this. It was just a human body, like so many other human bodies she'd examined before.

But… it just seemed so _weird!_ Even if they were no longer student and teacher, there was just something inappropriate and wrong about touching Kakashi in an intimate place like that.

She exhaled raggedly. "Lift, please," she said, pointing at the hem of his gown. Well, there was no turning back now.

Kakashi reached down and lazily lifted his gown up slightly. Sakura was immediately glad that she couldn't see it, because that would have embarrassed her to no end. For a long moment, nobody moved, and then Kakashi gave a slight cough to get her attention. "Ah, it's getting a bit drafty…" he trailed off, letting his gaze drift to a rather dull painting on the far wall. He didn't really want to stand here all day lifting up his gown.

Sakura blinked. "Oh. Right. Sorry." She reached out hesitantly, her fingers shaking, and then suddenly they ghosted over flesh. She pressed a little harder. _Okay, that's his hip._ She nearly sighed in relief.

"That tickles," Kakashi murmured.

Sakura said nothing, and let her fingers travel closer to _that spot_. When she touched it, she tried not to think about how it belonged to one of the most respected and skilled ninja in Konoha. _This is a medical procedure_, she kept reminding herself. _Just a medical procedure. Nothing out of the ordinary._

It was soft and warm, but no bigger or smaller than most of the ones she'd dealt with. Of course, she still couldn't see it. Sakura didn't want to look at his face in case he was looking at her, so she stared at a random spot on his hospital gown, near the middle – around where his ribs were, she supposed. The gown hung so loosely on him that it was hard to tell without looking above his shoulders.

She kept squeezing and cradling, checking for any strange lumps or anything out of the ordinary. "Any discomfort?" she asked, and was a little relieved to hear that she sounded more professional than she felt.

Kakashi made an odd noise in the back of his throat. "Not yet," he replied, and there was something odd about his tone of voice that Sakura couldn't quite place.

She frowned. "You _know_ what I mean…" Sakura stopped, feeling something strange all of a sudden. She gave another experimental squeeze. "What is that…?" she mumbled almost incoherently, and a few seconds later she pulled her hand away and stepped back quickly. "Is it – are you…? Oh my god."

-

Tsunade nearly choked on her instant ramen when Sakura burst into her office, her face red.

"Tsunade-sama!" Sakura cried, and came to an abrupt halt just in front of her mentor's desk. Her fists were balled so tightly her knuckles were white and looked like they might pop from the strain.

Tsunade coughed a little, trying to clear her windpipe, and she looked at the pink-haired kunoichi curiously. "Yes?" she rasped, and cleared her throat. "Can I help you?"

"Remember earlier? When you asked me if I was being overworked?"

"Yes…"

Sakura began pacing back and forth in front of the desk. "Well, I think I might need a little time off," she said carefully, and then stopped. "No," she corrected. "Not time off, just… a little less work."

Tsunade narrowed her eyes. "Okay… I could cut your shifts for a couple of weeks. Is that fine?"

Sakura chewed on her lower lip. "I was thinking… desk work. I'm sure there's a lot of paperwork that needs to be done… and if I devote my time to filing, then you and Shizune-san would probably be able to get a chance to do other things…"

"Sakura…"

"Um, yes?"

Tsunade pushed her instant ramen off to the side and clasped her hands together on the desk. "Is there any reason for this sudden change of heart?" she asked delicately, watching her protégé closely. Sakura was behaving strangely, like she'd just seen a ghost or some other kind of paranormal activity. Sakura took brief glances at the Hokage every couple of seconds, until she finally leaned on the desk and gave a weary sigh.

"Okay, well… I was doing my first exam today and…"

"And?"

"And… during the testicular exam, he…" Sakura couldn't bring herself to complete that sentence, so she settled for using crude gestures to try and get her point across.

Tsunade was amused. "Sakura… how is that a bad thing? Actually, let me rephrase that. How is that an _unusual_ thing? I mean, this has _happened_ to you before. What's so different this time?"

"It was… um… Kakashi-sensei."

Tsunade chuckled but said nothing. It was kind of amusing to think that Kakashi could have succumbed to the same kind of thing that normally affected pubescent genin and horny old men when they were subject to a complete physical by a pretty young nurse. Plus, Kakashi was almost nearly in complete control of himself. She couldn't help but chuckle.

"It's not funny, Tsunade-sama!" Sakura cried. "It's weird!"

"So? It's just Kakashi. He doesn't have anything you haven't seen before, I'm sure."

"I know that, but… he was my teacher! I knew him when I was twelve!"

"Fine, fine…" Tsunade waved her hand dismissively and sighed. "I'll put you on desk duty for two weeks. Is that enough time for you to get over your little hang-up over this… thing?"

Sakura looked absolutely relieved and found herself bowing several times graciously. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"I am also giving you Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays off from now on."

Sakura stopped. "Huh?" she spluttered, looking confused. Why would Tsunade give her three days off? She was _fine_. She had desk work now.

Tsunade shrugged. "Well, initially, you did say you wanted less work."

Oh. That was right. She _had_ said that. But she wasn't really listening to herself; she kept thinking about _that incident_. How could that happened? It was true that sometimes men could get aroused during physicals, but that hadn't happened recently to Sakura, and moreover it hadn't bothered her until now. The first time it happened, she freaked, but after Tsunade and Shizune calmed her down and explained to her why it happened, she began to get a little more comfortable in exams, knowing that it was just something that happened sometimes.

But this time, it seemed different – dirty, even. Something utterly, utterly wrong. And it made her blush like nothing else.

"I was going to suggest some time off anyway," Tsunade was saying. "I was thinking about it before, about how you said I wasn't overworking you even though it was obvious you were lying, and I came to one conclusion."

"Oh… yeah?"

"You live and breathe medicine."

"I'm sorry?"

"You're here every day, healing broken bones and patching up injuries with the nurses. You're very dedicated."

Sakura nodded her head, but she didn't feel especially ecstatic about the compliment. She had a feeling this wasn't going to end well for her.

"It's your dedication I appreciate. It's helped you achieve so much these past few years. But…" Tsunade's brow creased as she gave Sakura a very intense stare. "It's your dedication to your job that has me worried. It's almost as if you have no life outside of work."

"That's not true!" Sakura protested. "Last night I went out with Ino to a bar…"

"I'm guessing not completely of your own volition?" Tsunade offered, and then continued before Sakura could say anything. "I'm just concerned that you're biting off more than you can chew. You're eighteen, Sakura. You shouldn't be holed up in a hospital giving old men erections."

Sakura shot the Hokage a dirty look.

"Sorry. That was in bad taste, huh?"

"Tsunade-sama… I'm not like the other eighteen-year olds – "

Tsunade interrupted her. "And that's _exactly_ what I'm concerned about! I'm concerned that all this work is alienating you from people your own age. You should be able to drink and have fun. Give old men erections _outside_ of the hospital."

"…Still in bad taste," Sakura grumbled. "But even so… Tsunade-sama, the reason I'm not like other eighteen-year olds has nothing to do with working here. I just don't like… doing those things."

"So… take the few days off I'm giving you and find a hobby."

"A hobby?"

"Yeah. Take up flower arranging or collect wind chimes. Anything non-medical so you have something to distract you from things like what happened today," Tsunade gave a shrug. "Everybody has some kind of hobby."

Sakura thought about that for a second. "Ino doesn't," she pointed out. "Not really."

"Oh? What does she do in her spare time, then?"

"Uh… she goes to bars and hangs out with Shikamaru and Chouji…"

"I see. And that doesn't distract her from the brutality of missions?"

Sakura said nothing.

"And what do you do in your spare time, Sakura?" Tsunade asked, raising an eyebrow.

"…Nothing."

Tsunade thought as much. As fiery as Sakura could be, she just didn't seem like the kind of person who would indulge in a trivial hobby during her off hours. At the end of her shifts, the pink-haired girl just seemed exhausted. "Think of it as a mission. I'm ordering you to get a hobby," Tsunade said casually, pulling her instant ramen towards her again. "I'll give you until Tuesday."

-

Kakashi couldn't believe that happened. That had never happened to him before. Even six years ago, when he last had a physical, a female medic had been the one examining him, but he didn't feel even the slightest aroused. And he'd been reading his _book_ too.

He'd been embarrassed, considering Sakura had been touching him at the time it happened, but he never stayed embarrassed for very long. He was a little concerned about how Sakura was taking this, actually. She'd completed the rest of the exam with a kind of robotic haste he'd never seen her possess before, and then was out the door as soon as she was done.

He just couldn't understand how his body worked sometimes. One minute, he was thinking about how strange it was that he was being squeezed in the palm of Sakura's hand – Sakura, who'd been twelve six years ago – and how she was just a little girl back then. And then he kept reminding himself that she was eighteen now. She was an adult, not a child. An adult. But reminding himself of that fact seemed to unconsciously send his hormones into overdrive, and then, before he knew it, he was sporting a rather impressive arousal.

He wasn't sure what to do now. Should he apologize to Sakura? Or maybe it was best not to see her…

But first, Kakashi was going to go home and hit his head against the wall a few times.

* * *

AN: So, um, this is actually the second version of the second chapter. The first version I actually had completed a couple of days after I first posted, but I was seriously unhappy with it so I started writing this version. The other version was almost completely humourless, which disturbed me. I hope you had a good time reading! I adore your wonderful reviews. You guys made me happy. 


	3. Foiled again

AN: Um, so… I'm sorry for the lateness! Things got a bit hectic around here. I want February to be over so badly right now because I hope March will be better. Anyway, thank you for all the wonderful reviews! Fifty, last time I checked. That's spectacular! Something I certainly never hoped to achieve with just two chapters… but anyway, I digress. As always, unbeta'd and probably not without its hidden errors...

* * *

Monday. Ten forty-three. Her day off. Sakura wasn't sure what was worse: sitting around doing nothing, or sitting around doing nothing under the pretext of doing _something_. She had a book of crafts in front of her, and she was flipping haphazardly through it, wondering if there was something in there that suited her as a hobby.

She had come across knitting earlier on, but she didn't really like knitting so much. It wasn't that it seemed like a matronly hobby, she just thought it was too… common. Sakura had decided that if she was forced to choose a hobby (if only to appease Tsunade), it would be something exciting or unique. Something _different_.

Flower arranging had been something she _might_ have considered, but because Ino's family ran a flower shop, Sakura was predisposed to disliking the art. She didn't want a hobby to share with Ino, she wanted something of her own.

Bug collecting? No, Shino might have a fit…

Maybe she could start making those necklaces of flowers and grass like when she was a kid…?

Or she _could_ take up the kazoo. That was unusual and unique.

Sakura sighed. Why was this so _difficult_?

Somebody knocked loudly on her door all of a sudden, whipping Sakura out of her frustrated state of concentration. She stared dumbly at it, as if she couldn't comprehend the meaning behind the sound. Then she shook her head and called out, "Door's open!"

The doorknob turned and clicked, and then the door swung open slowly, revealing a blonde kunoichi and a lazy tactician.

"Good morning, Sakura!" Ino cried, traipsing into the apartment like she owned the place. Shikamaru closed the door behind him and sighed. He really didn't see the need to come _all_ the way up here…

Sakura blinked as the two made their way over to the couch, where she was sitting, and sat on either side of her (although Shikamaru more reluctantly than Ino). "Huh? Ino? Shikamaru? What are you doing here?" she asked, turning her head from side to side to see them both.

"That's what _I_ was thinking," Shikamaru grumbled, rubbing his neck. He flinched when Ino reached around behind Sakura (unbeknownst to her) and pinched the flesh on his hip all of a sudden.

Ino rolled her eyes. "Well, we were going to come visit you at work, Sakura," she explained. "But that other nurse… not Shizune… damn, what was her name?"

"Otsune?"

"Yes, that's the one. She said you had the day off." Ino's eyes flashed dangerously. "Now, why didn't you bother to tell _me_ you had the day off? We could have made plans!"

Sakura gestured to the book in front of her on the coffee table. "I've been trying to find a hobby."

"Hobbies are trivial," Shikamaru mumbled, only to be on the receiving end of another of Ino's pinches.

Sakura didn't know what was happening. Ino's facial expression never faltered or gave away the fact that she was pinching Shikamaru, and Sakura shrugged off his odd faces like nothing. All she knew was that she would have agreed with Shikamaru if she hadn't been in this particular situation. "Why are you trying to find a hobby so badly?" Ino asked, a little confused. "Trying to impress some guy?"

Sakura frowned. "No, Ino. Unlike you, I'm trying to find a hobby to develop my personality further, not catch the attention of some guy."

"Well, same thing. Anyway, you should have called me. I could help!"

"How, exactly? By reading this book _for_ me?" Sakura snorted. "I doubt it."

Shikamaru sighed. "Hobbies are useless. Why should you have to spend your time on something like that? I could think of a million other things to do with my time rather than collecting and arranging bottle caps…"

"She's not going to be collecting and arranging bottle caps," Ino said hotly, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Then what am I going to be doing?" Sakura frowned. Leave it up to her friends to argue over _her_ prospective hobby.

Ino snatched the book off of the coffee table, pulled it onto Sakura's lap, and began flipping through it quickly. Shikamaru pretended not to show any interest, but he couldn't help glancing down at the pages every so often. Sakura blinked and watched the pages turn, sometimes catching a glimpse of something that looked interesting only to have it rudely replaced by another page that Ino deemed _more_ worthy of her time.

"Dammit, Ino!" she finally cried, slapping her hand down on the book before Ino could turn another page. "I can't pick a hobby if you keep doing that!"

"Doing what? _Flipping pages?_" Ino asked, shooting Sakura an incredulous look. She obviously didn't understand the problem.

Sakura's hand curled into a fist on the page. "You're turning the pages too fast," she stated plainly. "I can't read four hundred words per second."

"You don't have to read four-hundred words, you just have to read a couple of words and look at the picture!"

"That's not how I do things, _pig_!"

"_Forehead!"_

"Origami," Shikamaru said all of a sudden, eliciting two stern glares from the females who sat beside him.

Ino's sea-green eyes flashed dangerously. "Who are you calling an – "

Even though Ino misinterpreted Shikamaru's statement as something insulting and brash (go figure), he decided he would rather not be punched in the face due to a simple misunderstanding. After all, he did not like pain, and besides that it would be very embarrassing to be at the mercy of a _girl_. Even if it was Ino, and he didn't exactly think of her that way, she was still a scary person to deal with.

Before he could say anything in his defense, Sakura beat him to it. "Oh, _origami_!" she exclaimed, looking down at the book that was open on her lap. On the left hand page, the word 'Origami' graced the top in thick black strokes, followed by pictures of hands folding a piece of square sky-blue paper in various steps. She moved her hand from the middle of the right-hand page, revealing a picture of a sky-blue paper crane, and immediately thought it was probably the prettiest thing she'd ever seen.

"That is cool," she remarked quietly, tapping the picture with her index finger.

"Maybe you should take up paper folding," Shikamaru suggested. "Since you're so adamant about this hobby thing."

Ino thought it was a brilliant idea. She insisted that they go out and buy Sakura supplies at that very moment. If Sakura had been paying attention, she might have protested, but she didn't even notice until she was out in her apartment hallway, her sandals half on her feet.

-

"Why haven't I done origami before?" Sakura asked to no one in particular as they went into an old-looking store she didn't remember seeing before in her life. She stared fondly at some small hand-woven baskets piled on a shelf. Ino grabbed one and looked it over before tossing it back in the pile.

"I don't know," she replied with a shrug. "We're ninja, not artists. Although, a paper shuriken would be kind of cool to make. I wonder if you could use it as a real weapon… I bet, with some practice and precision…"

Shikamaru sighed. "Stop looking at that stuff," he said, clearly annoyed when he noticed Ino move to pick up some wooden mannequin. She glared at him briefly and picked it up anyway, making a big show of turning it over in her hands and examining every inch of it carefully. She didn't put it down until Shikamaru gave another aggravated sigh and wandered off somewhere.

Sakura eyed a big bin of soft-bristle brushes. "Paper shuriken really don't have a point. I mean, not where we're concerned," she said carefully. "We have real ones. I like the little flowers you can make."

"Not so infatuated with the paper crane anymore?"

"No, they're still cute. Besides, I'm just testing this new hobby out."

Sakura thought it was odd to say she was taking her new hobby for a test drive. Hobbies were usually things you enjoyed doing and didn't exactly call hobbies until you'd been doing them for years almost religiously. People didn't just go out, decide to do something they sort of liked, and call it a hobby. It felt strange, but Tsunade didn't really give her a choice. Finding a hobby in a few days' time wasn't exactly easy.

Suddenly, Shikamaru approached, holding a large stack of colourful paper.

"Oh," Ino seemed surprised. "You found the origami paper already."

He just shrugged and handed the stack to the pink haired ninja.

"Er, thanks, Shikamaru," Sakura said, looking down at the perfectly square sheets of paper and flipping through the multitude of colours haphazardly. Blue, orange, red, green, yellow, purple… pink…

"How much will this cost me?" Sakura asked, holding the papers up and inspecting the thickness of the stack with a frown. There was a lot of paper.

"Not much," Shikamaru said. "I think it's ten ryo for fifteen sheets, so…"

Sakura tried to count the papers, but Ino was talking about numbers behind her, which was slightly distracting (to say the least). "Wait, if it's ten for fifteen, what happens if someone wants to buy one or two?" Ino was saying.

Shikamaru was irritated. "Nobody's going to buy just one sheet of origami paper, Ino. You usually buy them in packs. Twenty, thirty, and I bet they have fifty or one-hundred packs…"

Sakura stopped trying to count and glared at the two of them. "Do you mind?"

Shikamaru just shrugged, but Ino rolled her eyes. "Why don't you just go to the counter and let the shopkeeper count for you?"

"It's probably less trouble for you," Shikamaru grumbled. "And us, too."

Ino blinked. "How is it easier for us?"

"Nothing, never mind."

Sakura stared at them for a moment before deciding that they were absolutely right. She turned on her heel and made her way to the counter, where a small elderly man was sitting on a tall stool, watching her (and her friends) closely with harsh, icy eyes nearly covered by thick folds of wrinkled skin. But as she approached, his mouth split into a wide, semi-toothless grin, and he made a vague gesture towards her, beckoning her towards him. His eyes still looked cold, even though his demeanor was anything but.

"Found everything you're looking for?" he asked, taking the origami paper from her, his voice reminiscent of a creaky wooden wheel. Sakura wasn't sure if she felt like smiling back at him, but luckily the courtesy her mother had instilled in her since she was a child – _"Sakura, always be kind and gracious to your elders!"_ – forced her to smile back at the old man, regardless of whether or not she truly meant it. She was startled to find him looking her over brazenly like she was some kind of artwork. It gave her the chills.

"Ah, yes, I believe we've found everything…" Sakura said quietly, and threw a nervous glance over her shoulder at Ino and Shikamaru, who were waiting anxiously by the door, watching her with mild unease and curiosity. She wondered what they had to be nervous about. After all, it wasn't like _they_ were being overly scrutinized.

"Your hair is a titillating shade of pink, my dear," the old man suddenly said, still grinning as he held the paper in his hand. He hadn't even made a move to count any of it. Sakura laughed weakly, wondering why exactly he had chosen the word 'titillating'. She didn't like that word. Even though it was a perfectly normal word, it always sounded dirty. He could have said 'your hair is a nice shade of pink' or a 'lovely shade of pink'. But no, he _had_ to say titillating.

Maybe she was reading too much into this.

"So, you're taking up origami," the old man deduced after a moment of awkward silence. He pulled the stack closer and thumbed through it idly. "I'm sure your husband is very happy for you."

What era was this man living in?

"Um, I don't have a husband," Sakura said quietly, giving a forced nervous laugh. She immediately regretted saying anything because he gave her a toothless grin again.

"Then your boyfriend is probably very happy for you," he continued, counting the papers.

Sakura stiffened, and then gave a sharp nod of her head. "Oh, he is," she assured him, looking away. She had to look away. She was a horrible liar, she knew, and one look into her eyes when she was lying would give her away. "He's, uh, the happiest guy in the world."

"Who, that young man back there?" the old man inquired, leaning slightly to look around Sakura. He gave Shikamaru a long, hard stare.

"No," Sakura replied before she even had a chance to think about it. She kicked herself in the head, mentally. She should have said yes! Shikamaru was her friend! He would understand, surely, even if it was troublesome to lie to this man.

The old man looked at her again, and his stare was nothing but suspicious. "I see. And your boyfriend lets you wander around Konoha with other men?"

Sakura glanced back at her friends and then gave an oddly explosive laugh like he'd just said the funniest thing in the world. Ino and Shikamaru jumped at her sudden outburst, but remained anxiously standing at the door, waiting for Sakura to finish up.

"Um, no, no, Shikamaru is… Ino's boyfriend," she lied, forcing a smile. "Besides, my boyfriend… he trusts me."

"Might I ask his name?"

"It's… uh…" Sakura looked away again before responding with a light shrug of her shoulders. "His name is… Naruto."

The man stopped moving. "Uzumaki Naruto?"

Sakura glanced at the old man to see his reaction. He was giving her a rather disdainful look, like he figured she could do better. Honestly, Sakura wouldn't have fought him on that. As much as she cared about Naruto _as a friend_, she probably couldn't bring herself to date him. She could do much better than a boy with an intense love of ramen, semi-nude women, and a never-ending well of immaturity. But she wasn't ever going to admit that to anyone.

"Yes," Sakura replied after a moment. "Uzumaki Naruto. Why so curious?" She tried to play off the question like it was nothing, but she really wanted to know why this old guy was so keen on finding out about her personal life.

The man stiffened, then relaxed, his fingers processing the papers as he studied her. "Well, to be honest, I wouldn't have expected someone as pretty as you to be involved with someone as… beastly… as him."

Sakura wasn't exactly sure if he'd answered the question properly, but she didn't exactly like the old man's snide undertone, so she let it go. She also didn't really want to linger around waiting for him to slowly count origami paper while dissecting her love life like it was a dead frog. She began to fidget. "So… er… how much do I owe you?" she asked, trying to smile as sweetly as possible.

He tilted his head slightly. "One thousand ryo. But for you… eight hundred."

Sakura's pink eyebrows practically shot up into her hairline, surprised that he would have given her a discount despite his obvious disapproval of her fake love life. "Well… thank you," she practically gushed.

"I can't ask such a pretty girl to pay full price. It would be a crime."

_Ah… that's why._

She reached into her bag and pulled out some coins, enough to cover the cost of the paper.

Just as she slapped the coins down on the counter and was about to grab the papers and shove them into her bag, Ino and Shikamaru appeared at her sides, evidently bored with standing silently at the front of the store. Sakura painfully watched as the old man took the paper's back and began to place the stack in a little paper bag.

"What's taking so long, Sakura?" Ino asked sweetly, tilting her head in that faux-cute way that she was prone to doing sometimes when she was annoyed or irritated and didn't want to outwardly express it.

"Oh… nothing, Ino," Sakura replied in a tone just as sickly sweet and full of urgency. "We've just finished."

"Yes," the old man said carefully, placing the bag on the counter. "You can make a paper flower for your boyfriend now."

Ino and Shikamaru gave her some very interesting stares, and immediately Sakura wished she could just sink into the floor and die. Why did he have to go and _say_ that?

"Oh… that's right," Ino said all of a sudden. "Her boyfriend."

"Ahahaha, yes!" Sakura gave a weak laugh and pulled at Ino's arm lightly. "Speaking of boyfriends… mine's waiting for me right now!"

"Yes, at the most expensive teashop in town!" Ino was fluttering her eyelashes, the damn girl. Sakura hated it when her friend did that. She only did that under two conditions: when she was angling for some kind of freebie or when she was lying and wanted people to believe her. Damn damn damn. Sakura chewed on her lower lip and hoped that Ino was finished telling stories.

Of course, she wasn't.

"That Hatake Kakashi really knows how to treat a girl, you know," Ino finished with an evil little giggle.

The old man looked surprised and suspicious again. "Hold on," he said, pointing a long, wrinkled finger at Sakura. "You told me you were involved with Uzumaki Naruto."

"Ah, well…" Sakura glared at Ino momentarily. If looks could kill, Ino would have been dead seven times over by now. "I apologize… Naruto is actually my ex. It hasn't been that long, so sometimes my mind gets carried away…" She would have denied Ino's little story vehemently, except the chances of the old man believing her would be next to none. How could she expect him to believe her if her own story was thrown back in her face by her closest friend?

…And wait, why did this even matter? It wasn't like Sakura planned on coming back to this little shop in the near future anyway. She was just going to keep up this hobby – or, façade, really – until things returned to normal and Tsunade forgot she even said anything in the first place to Sakura about having no life. Then she could return to testing people's reflexes and pressing ice packs to people's swollen extremities.

"We really should be going," Shikamaru said all of a sudden, clearing his throat. "I have to go prepare a report for Tsunade-sama, and she hates it when things are handed in late."

"Right!" Sakura nodded almost violently. "So, let's go!"

The old man absorbed this information with a cryptic smile on his face and nodded. "Of course," he replied. "Please, have a nice day… Sakura."

-

Sakura couldn't help the shiver that coursed through her after they left the shop and had gotten out of the old man's line of sight. She turned to Ino to give her a piece of her mind, but Ino (violent as always – and quick as well) gave her a sudden, hard shove. Sakura barely had time to brace herself and jerked backwards for a second before angrily stepping back up and glaring.

"What the hell was that in there?" Ino demanded. "That whole, 'my boyfriend's waiting' thing. What the hell?"

Sakura was fuming. "What? The old guy was creepy! He kept asking me personal things! What was I supposed to say?"

"How about, 'those questions are personal, sorry'?" Shikamaru grumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. Women and their excuses… That was a world he didn't want to enter any time soon.

Sakura shot him a look filled with venom. "Stay out of it, Shikamaru," she barked, and turned back to Ino. "And what about you? I never asked you to throw in your own lies! If you hadn't opened your big mouth, things wouldn't have gotten out of hand!"

Ino made a series of spluttering sounds, and her expression morphed into one of indignant surprise. "Out of hand? All I did was lie about your nonexistent boyfriend, stupid! If you're asking me, you're overreacting! You lied too, you know!"

"Well, there's a big difference between Naruto and Kakashi, okay?" Sakura snapped, and immediately a crumpled look washed over her delicate features. She hadn't meant to say that. She was thinking it, yes, but she _really_ hadn't meant to say that.

A devilish look came over Ino, and she smiled wickedly at Sakura. "I see. It bothers you more that I said 'Kakashi'. That's why you're jumping down my throat on this one. Is there something going on between you and your sensei?"

"Ex-sensei," Sakura grumbled, turning and staring off down the street. She had to hand it to Ino. Although the blonde did have her 'blonde moments' sometimes, she could be remarkably perceptive. "And no," she continued. "Nothing's going on. I swear. Nothing is going on at all."

"You denied it, like, three times in the same breath," Ino pointed out. "That means you're a dirty liar."

"No, when I lie, I – "

"Look everywhere but at the person you're lying to? Yeah, I know. You're doing it right now. So… why are you so averse to Kakashi? I mean, you'd rather I tell that old guy your boyfriend really is Naruto? That obnoxious – "

Sakura crossed her arms and shifted her bag onto her shoulder. "It's personal. I can't really talk about it because it's a… medical thing."

Ino looked interested, and she smirked at her pink-haired friend. "Has that stopped you from telling me that crap before?"

Sakura was appalled that Ino would even think it was okay to discuss someone else's physical examination out in the street – or at all, for that matter. And sure, Sakura had discussed some things before, but she never gave out a patient's name, and it wasn't usually about something as embarrassing as _this_. She remembered once discussing a giant pustule on some guy's back when he came into the hospital one day, and how disgusting it was that during the removal procedure, it had burst in a wonderful explosion of pus and blood, spraying Sakura and two other nurses in the face. But that seemed different somehow.

Shikamaru wondered how far he'd get if he snuck away now. Would they notice he was even gone or would Ino, in all of her insane glory, somehow detect him trying to sneak off and make him stay? He was scared of her sometimes. She was pushy and persistent and often angry, and whenever he accidentally made her mad, he caught himself looking over his shoulder or just staying home out of fear for his own life.

Luckily, Sakura wasn't as bad. Yes, she could get angry sometimes (sometimes even worse than Ino), but that was always evened out by her sweet and nurturing side. Ino didn't have one of those. It was Ino he feared the most.

Perhaps it was better to stay…

…but they were ignoring him completely now. It would be a waste to stand around doing nothing when he could do nothing somewhere else, preferably sitting or lying down.

Experimentally, he shuffled back about a foot, and Ino's sea-green eyes snapped towards him, glittering dangerously. "Where do you think you're going, Shikamaru?" she asked, her voice low and dangerous.

He shuffled forward. "I'm not going anywhere," he grumbled.

Damn. Foiled.

Sakura tapped her fingers on her arms. "Ino, I'm not going to tell you what happened. Ever. So drop it, okay? And for that matter, let's drop this whole boyfriend thing. I don't want things to get blown out of proportion…"

Ino grinned all of a sudden. "Fine. I won't bother you about Kakashi anymore."

"Why do I still have this odd feeling?" Sakura eyed her friend suspiciously.

"That's probably because while I'm not going to sing juvenile songs about you and your ex-sensei sitting in a tree, I _am_ going to tell Naruto that you absolutely want him!"

And with that, Ino ran away, cackling evilly. Sakura felt the colour drain from her face and she ran after her friend to catch up, screaming furiously about how Naruto wouldn't think Ino was joking. Shikamaru sighed.

He supposed he could go _now_, if he wanted.

-

Once they were out of view, the old man slid down from his stool, his back hunched over from years of bad posture. He shuffled over the dry, cracked wooden boards to the back, which was separated from the rest of the store by a hanging cotton curtain that was a washed-out green colour with some kind of faded circular pattern.

There was a man in the back, bent over a wooden carving, scraping off some wood bits with a dented shuriken.

"Ennosuke, you should go out more," the old man reprimanded lightly, watching the carver with mild interest. The man was young, maybe a little older than Sakura, and he was focusing on his carving with intense concentration, looking as though one wrong slice might make him snap.

"I don't feel like going out," Ennosuke grumbled. "My art isn't finished yet."

His sculpture was roughly the size and shape of a human head, just a little bigger and not very defined at all.

The old man narrowed his electric blue eyes. "You don't even have a subject. How can you complete this artwork if you have no one to sculpt?"

Ennosuke paused, and then looked up at the old man. "Grandfather…" he regarded the small, wrinkled man with slight suspicion, but nothing could hide the excitement he was feeling, and his lips curled up into a smile. "You've found me someone?"

"Yes. You'll never find someone so perfect."

Ennosuke's happy smile died all of a sudden, and he looked away. The old man frowned. "No one," he added hastily, "as perfect as Momoko, of course…"

Ennosuke waved it off with a graceful flick of his hand. "Who is it, grandfather?" he asked, sounding bored. "Who've you found for me?"

The old man smiled.

* * *

AN: I want to get another chapter out relatively soon, but I'm not going to make any promises because in the event I am unable to keep them, I don't really want to find a severed horse's head in my bed. Thanks again for all the reviews!

Oh, and if you're wondering why I used 'ryo' instead of 'yen'... it's because as an avid player of _Naruto: Ultimate Ninja_, I'm used to dishing out a thousand or more ryo to Ebisu and Konohamaru for one damn capsule. Yeah, that's all.


	4. Strawberry uiro!

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

_Dedication: I'm dedicating this chapter to my late grandfather, who died Wednesday night, May 16th, 2007. Here's to you, grampa -- I inherited more from you than just a love of bologna and a passion for pranks and jokes. Cheers!_

AN: So, it's been a while. I was on a Harry Potter kick for a couple of months and it didn't feel right to half-ass this Naruto fic while my focus was primarily elsewhere, but I'm back on Naruto now! And in celebration of Anime North (it could not have come _sooner_) and my consequent loss of paycheque (aaargh), I bring you a new chapter. And, lucky for you, this chapter is beta'd, by my new beta, **Harrison J. Pecans**, who happens to be _tres fantastique_. Hooray! Enjoy, and I apologize for the lateness -- but know that I haven't abandoned this at all. :)

* * *

"By the way, why did you say 'Naruto'?"

Sakura looked across the table at Ino. It was just around noon, and they were sitting at a sweet shop sharing a pot of green tea. Shikamaru had disappeared completely after the little debacle in front of that creepy old man's shop, and they hadn't seen him since. But it didn't matter. He probably wouldn't have contributed much to the conversation.

Ino was giving Sakura a pointed look that Sakura didn't really like. It seemed too calculating.

"Does it matter?" Sakura rebuked carefully, frowning.

Ino scoffed. "Is it wishful thinking or something? Because I'm sure I could set something up…"

"Dear god, Ino. It's not that!"

"Then what? I don't get it! Don't you have a crush on anybody? Couldn't you have used someone _better_?"

Ino could be so dense sometimes.

"Naruto is one of my best friends," Sakura pointed out. "I was sure he wouldn't mind if, say, a rumour started floating around that I was dating him. It would be easier to explain to him what really happened and have him _believe_ me."

"So? Is that any different than Kakashi? He was your teacher, I'm sure he'd understand too."

A furious blush overcame Sakura, and she immediately snatched her teacup off the table and gulped the scalding liquid quickly and carelessly. Ino watched in horror as Sakura's face turned an unpleasant red colour, adding to the blush she was already sporting, and she began gasping for breath. "H-hot!" the pink-haired girl exclaimed, sticking her tongue out and fanning it wildly with her hands.

"Well, duh." Ino ignored the mean look she was receiving from Sakura and propped her head up on interlaced fingers. Her carefully plucked and shaped eyebrows were raised inquisitively and she wore a devilish smirk, and if Sakura didn't know better, she would have sworn it was Ino who harboured the Kyuubi, not Naruto. "So," Ino continued. "Are you going to tell me why Kakashi is so different from Naruto or not?"

Sakura drummed her fingers on the table. "Well… Kakashi has grey hair. That's one way they're different."

"Sakura… stop being so evasive. Would it kill you to tell your best friend what's going on in your life?"

Just then, the worst possible person entered the shop in all of his mad glory, and Sakura thought to herself, 'Yes, Ino. It really would kill me – or, at the very least, _he_ would,' as she watched the object of her misery and embarrassment practically saunter across the floor and over to the counter like some kind of stupid cat.

"Ah, Kakashi-san," the old woman behind the counter greeted him enthusiastically, discreetly trying to pluck some rice off of her hair. "Can I interest you in some desserts? We have fresh _dango_, I just made it myself not a moment ago. My daughter made some chestnut _uiro _this morning, maybe you'd like some…? Oh, you remember my daughter, don't you, Kakashi-san?"

Kakashi didn't seem to be in the mood for idle chit-chat. He simply nodded his head. "Do you have any strawberry _uiro_?" he asked, going directly to business.

The woman clapped her hands. "Coming right up."

"I'll take six, if you have them."

"No problem. Nine hundred ryo, please."

The woman disappeared into the back. Kakashi pulled a few coins out of his pocket and put them on the counter, and then he stared at them for a long while as if contemplating something.

"What is he doing?" Ino asked quietly. Evidently, she found Kakashi's ministrations far more interesting than their lackluster conversation, for which Sakura was glad.

Kakashi suddenly looked up, around at everybody as if he could tell he was being watched, and then – just then – he noticed Sakura and Ino staring at him. He gave a cordial wave and starting coming towards them, his hands stuffed in his pockets. A cold wave of fear washed over Sakura.

_Why is he coming over here? No! I'm not ready to face him after – after – that!_

"Yo," he greeted casually. "Ino, Sakura, how are you?"

"Why so nice, Kakashi-san?" Ino asked. "I thought you and Sakura were having a fight or something."

Kakashi didn't look at Sakura for the longest time – and Sakura was rather surprised to find that she was staring him right in the face. She thought she'd be too embarrassed. But maybe it was because she knew she'd start thinking about _that thing_ again if she looked anywhere else.

"Is that what Sakura told you?" he asked quietly. "That we were having a fight?"

He sounded almost relieved.

"Well, no," Ino admitted with a shrug. "She actually won't tell me anything. She freaked out on me when I told this old guy that you were her boyfriend. Apparently, I ruined her big plans for her and Naruto…"

"Ino!" Sakura said sharply, desperately even. "Can you shut up?"

Kakashi finally looked at Sakura and raised his eyebrows. "You and Naruto, huh? I'll be sure to let him know…"

"No, you won't, because I'll kill you before you get the chance!" Sakura threatened hotly.

"I seriously doubt that."

"But I know people who could do it for me."

And quite suddenly, without explanation, things felt normal again. The fact that she and Kakashi were on speaking terms again after a few days of avoiding each other completely made Sakura feel relieved beyond all else. Maybe, if they just kept speaking to each other like normal, they could avoid ever talking about the embarrassing scenario from days before.

Kakashi looked at Ino again. "So how come you lied for her?" he asked curiously. "Was the old man trying to pick her up?"

"I don't know. I lied because _she_ lied and told him she had a boyfriend – so really, she brought this upon herself."

"Thanks, pig," Sakura said wryly, and fiddled with her teacup.

"So was he?"

Sakura frowned. "A little. I think. He was asking me a lot of personal questions. I thought if I told him I had a boyfriend, if would deflect a lot of the more… personal ones."

"Oh."

"Kakashi-san!"

The old woman was back, and she had placed on the counter a package of six strawberry _uiro_, wrapped in pink cellophane and tied with a white cotton ribbon.

"Yes, Moriko-san?" Kakashi replied politely, turning to face the kindly shopkeeper.

"…You gave me only three hundred ryo."

"Oh, that's right," He turned to Sakura and Ino. "I knew I came over here for a reason…"

Sakura twitched. "You came over here to borrow money from us?"

Kakashi sounded oddly cheerful. "Yes. Of course, I _was_ going to offer you one of my strawberry _uiro_ in return, but if you're going to be snippy about it…"

Ino pulled out her change purse and presented three hundred ryo, but she didn't seem all that sad to part with her money. "I'll give you this only if you promise to teach me how to brush off my bills on other people. I see you do it all the time, and I've always wondered how to get away with it as smoothly as you do…" she mentioned idly, rubbing her chin thoughtfully as she handed over the coins.

"I'll see what I can do," Kakashi said, and accepted the money before turning an expectant look to Sakura.

Sakura was a little more reluctant to hand over her change than Ino, but that was only because she hated it when Kakashi did this kind of thing. She wouldn't have been surprised if Kakashi was actually walking around with nine _thousand_ ryo in his pocket.

"You're insufferable," she grated, thrusting her fist out at him and dropping the coins into his waiting palm.

Kakashi smiled behind his mask. "So I've been told," he replied.

"You're indebted to me now," she snapped. "Three hundred ryo. Plus interest. Fifty ryo for each day you don't pay me back!"

"Ah, well, I suppose I can't argue…"

Of course, it was anybody's guess whether or not Kakashi would actually pay her back. Sakura wasn't holding her breath.

He meandered back over to the counter and handed the money to the shopkeeper. She gave him an odd look as she handed over the strawberry _uiro_, as if she was less than pleased with him for accosting two young ladies for money.

"Have a nice day," Moriko-san said, but her facial expression clearly suggested that she was _not_ wishing him a nice day. She might have liked Kakashi well enough, but really, there was no excuse for bothering two young girls for cash. The man was in his thirties! He should know better!

Kakashi nodded. "Thanks, I will," he intoned lightly, peering with great interest through the cellophane wrapping.

Sakura rolled her eyes and turned back to her tea, and Ino. "You see why he annoys me?" she said in a low voice.

Ino laughed. "I guess it's a good thing you bought all that origami paper," she pointed out, grinning madly. "Now you can use it as a stress reliever as well as a pointless hobby. I don't see why Tsunade-sama forced you to get a hobby anyway. Hobbies are useless."

"Everybody has _some_ kind of hobby, Ino," Sakura said darkly, echoing Tsunade's words from the other day.

Ino scoffed. "I don't. I don't need a hobby. I can have fun in other ways."

Sakura watched her friend for a moment, frowning as Ino gulped some lukewarm green tea. Of course, Ino's idea of fun was drinking almost all the time. It was a common sight to see Ino sitting in a seedy bar somewhere, on her fourth or fifth drink, with Shikamaru and Chouji hanging close by. Of course, Sakura didn't dare point this out; Ino's temper was something that shouldn't be faced unless heavily armed and from a very high turret of some kind, and for some reason, Ino took offense to statements like, "You drink too much", and "I don't really feel like going out tonight". Ino was just plain crazy. Sakura had long given up trying to figure her friend out.

"So, hey, try folding something for me," Ino said all of a sudden, pouring herself some more tea. "Try a crane."

Sakura's jaw dropped. "Ino!" she cried. "I just bought paper, and we just _skimmed_ the origami section in my book! I can't just go and fold a crane, _just like that_…"

Ino responded with a light shrug of her shoulders. "So what? Just try something. You did buy a huge stack, I'm sure one wasted piece of paper won't make a difference."

Sakura sighed in aggravation. It was true; she wasn't going to cry over having to chuck a piece of paper in the trash. She hoisted her bag onto the table and rooted through it. "Just so you know, this is going to be crap," she reminded her friend lightly. "Cranes are supposed to be tricky. I'm just a beginner."

"I don't care. If it looks stupid, I'll just laugh, but if it's good, I'll give you a mental high five for getting it on your first try."

Sakura raised an eyebrow and her lips twitched into a smile. "You're not going to high five me for real?"

"No, I don't really like high fives. They make you look like a loser."

"I see. You just won't _physically_ do it?"

Ino nodded. "Exactly," she said. "I think it's weird! I'd never do it. But whatever! Let's get off this topic and let's get you folding paper!"

Sakura placed a square of blue paper on the table in front of her, colour side up. She wasn't sure if the colour side was supposed to be face-up or face-down, but she liked the sky blue colour so it just made sense to leave it face up. She pressed her fingers to the edges of the paper and creased her brow. Okay, first fold… in half vertically or horizontally? Wait, if you fold it vertically and you need a horizontal fold, you could just turn the paper around.

"Fold diagonally, corner to corner, from the bottom left," said a voice, very close by.

Sakura jerked all of a sudden and turned her head. Kakashi was standing behind her, looking over her shoulder interestedly. He was holding the bag of strawberry desserts in one hand and gesturing lazily to the origami paper with the other. "Take the bottom left corner," he repeated. "And fold it up. Diagonally."

Sakura folded her paper exactly how Kakashi instructed.

"Okay, now unfold. Good. Take the bottom right and fold it diagonally too. No, a bit straighter than that…"

Sakura gave a tremendous sigh. "Look, Kakashi-sensei, if you want to do it yourself – "

Kakashi raised an eyebrow and shook his head. "No, no, you're doing fine so far…"

"I insist," Sakura said, glancing up at him and gesturing somewhat angrily at the paper. Her voice was bittersweet. It was easy for Kakashi to tell she was irritated with him. He gave a light shrug of his shoulders and gently placed the bag of strawberry uiro on the table. He stood there, at the side of the table, bending slightly at the waist as he pulled the paper towards himself and began folding it rapidly and flawlessly. Sakura's jaw nearly dropped; his hands moved so fast! She probably shouldn't have been surprised, seeing as he was a ninja. Fast hands meant there was a better chance of you surviving a dangerous situation, especially if you had to get through a series of hand signs to perform a complicated, life-saving jutsu. It's just that she wasn't accustomed to comparing the art of killing to the art of folding paper.

Within seconds, a paper crane was sitting in front of Sakura on the table, and when she looked up at Kakashi, she saw that his eye was curved upwards. He was obviously very pleased with himself.

"Wow, that is… um… special," Sakura said, at a loss for words. She picked up the crane lightly and held it in the palm of her hand, staring at it. Kakashi gave her an amused look at her awkward compliment.

"Oh man!" Ino cried, reaching over all of a sudden and snatching the crane from Sakura's hand. When she held it out in front of her to examine it, she had unknowingly bent the wing at an odd angle. But Ino, it seemed, didn't seem to care too much. Sakura was a little annoyed, though. It was like somebody rubbing charcoal on Michelangelo's _David_. You just don't defile a piece of art like that. The crane was _pretty_.

"You are seriously skilled," Ino continued, turning the crane around and practically gushing at Kakashi. "Sakura couldn't even do it."

"It was my first try!" Sakura cried incredulously. "You made me try even though I didn't know what I was doing!" She didn't really know why, but she felt really snippy right now. Maybe it was Ino crumpling Kakashi's pretty paper crane, or the fact that Ino seemed very demanding today (which actually was no different than any other day, now that she thought of it), or maybe it was because Ino was very obviously making googly eyes at Kakashi, and it was just weird.

Kakashi probably noticed. Sakura was absolutely sure he noticed. But he didn't tell Ino to stop or draw attention to her rapidly batting eyelashes at all, so he was probably just being polite. Either that or he enjoyed it, the thought of which seemed to irritate Sakura even more. The man was twice Ino's age, almost, and besides that… he was Sakura's old sensei. She just couldn't see the logic behind Ino's sudden flirtations.

Maybe folded paper turned Ino on or something. If that was the case, Sakura made a mental note not to fold paper ever again around Ino. Their friendship was strange enough.

He shrugged and plucked the crane from Ino's hand, looking it over carefully. He attempted to straighten the wing, but it didn't seem to want to stay straight no matter what he did, so he just gave up and handed it back to Sakura. "Origami is pretty easy, once you learn the proper folds," Kakashi said, sounding self-satisfied, and picked up his bag of strawberry treats. "I've got a book I'll let you borrow, Sakura. Consider my debt erased."

Sakura spluttered. "What? No, you still owe me money, sensei, and – "

"That would be lovely!" Ino said sweetly, before Sakura could get another word in. Her mouth hung open, mid-sentence, with no sound coming out, so she was forced to close it right away again. She felt absolutely silly.

"I'll bring it by the hospital," Kakashi said.

"Ino!"

The small group turned to the sound of the voice. It was Chouji, smiling and hurrying across the shop. He eyed Kakashi's strawberry _uiro_ hungrily as soon as he noticed them in his hand and looked almost pained as he forced himself to pry his eyes from them.

Ino raised her eyebrows. "What is it, Chouji?" she asked. "Short on lunch money again?"

"No, nothing like that! I was wondering if you'd seen Shikamaru anywhere. I can't find him in any of the usual places."

Ino paused for a long moment as a look of anger gradually overcame her feminine features. "Hey, yeah! Where is that slacker, anyway? He was with us this morning, and then he disappeared!"

"Shit," Chouji cursed before he remembered that Kakashi was there. "Er, uh, excuse my language," he added with an apologetic look towards the tall jounin.

"No excuse necessary," Kakashi said cheerfully.

"I have a bone to pick with that Shikamaru for scampering off all of a sudden," Ino growled, cracking her knuckles. Sakura rolled her eyes.

Chouji was very excited and clapped his hands together. "Great! You can help me look for him, then! I need to talk to him about something."

"Oh? What about?"

"…It's personal."

Sakura frowned. She knew that Shikamaru had probably predicted Ino's anger and so had found a good hiding place for the next couple of days. He knew, and everyone close to Ino knew, that once the blonde went on a rampage towards a certain target, she didn't stop until she either reached the target or another, more tantalizing target came along. Sakura did not plan on becoming that substitute target, so she made a mental note to stay on Ino's good side until Shikamaru could be found. She was so busy thinking about perhaps _finding_ Shikamaru for Ino, that she almost didn't notice Ino staring at her pointedly.

"What days do you have off at the hospital?" Ino asked, looking very serious. "I want to know so we can go out again, and so I can also plan my weeks around them."

"Oh," Sakura thought back. "Er – Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays," she finally said.

Ino's calculating stare disappeared, and she wore a sparkling grin (which usually only meant trouble). "Perfect!" the blonde kunoichi giggled. "Let's go out to a bar tomorrow night! There's this new one I want to go to, and it works out because you don't have to work the next day so you can stay out later!"

Sakura decided this was not the right moment to point out that she was most likely to swap her socializing time after midnight for some precious down time in her apartment, and instead responded with a tired nod of her head. "Yeah, sure," she replied, hoping Ino didn't really notice the unconvincing voice she unknowingly used. "What's the bar called?"

Ino shrugged. "No idea. They just opened it last week. It's got a red flag outside it with a picture of a big, drunk pelican. Maybe it's called the Drunk Pelican or something. It's just down the street from the bakery…"

"I'm sure I'll find it," Sakura assured her with a smile. Secretly, she was scheming to purposely _not_ find it, so that she could go home and have a legitimate excuse all ready for Ino as to why she wasn't able to make it.

"Perfect! I'll see you there! Now, come on, Choiji…"

Sakura and Kakashi watched Ino and Chouji leave with the tiniest shred of interest, and then Kakashi turned to her. "So," he began quietly, looking at Sakura. "Do you think we need to talk about what happened the other day?"

-

Tuesday mornings at the hospital were about the same as Monday mornings, Sakura had deduced after having worked there for a few years. It wasn't that busy, but she always found something to do to pass the time. This morning, however, she didn't have much to do. Last week she re-alphabetized her files, but there was only so many times you could order and re-order your files without appearing insane.

She felt extra fidgety this morning, and in desperate need of something to do. She was pretty sure that Tsunade had some forms she needed Sakura to fill out (seeing as Sakura was now stuck at her desk for two weeks), but Sakura didn't think it wise to just start rummaging around Tsunade's desk without permission.

Of course, her anxiety might have also come from yesterday. Just when she thought she and Kakashi were on good terms again, he went and brought up the thing she desperately wanted to avoid talking about.

He had asked her if she wanted to talk about it. She said no.

There had been a heavy pause, and then he asked her if she was sure. She had said yes.

Then he had the gall to point out that he thought it might do her a load of good if she _did_ talk about it. She was only eighteen, after all, and she knew him personally. Certainly there would be some awkwardness after that kind of situation. He said he understood that much.

She didn't think he could possibly understand, but she didn't dare say it out loud. Instead, she decided to run.

For some reason, running away from him seemed perfectly logical at the time, but thinking back she realized there were probably other ways to delicately let him know she really didn't want to talk about it.

It was a little embarrassing, actually. She acted like a twelve year old. Kakashi probably thought she was out of her gourd.

But at the very least, maybe he got the message to head off certain topics before they unwittingly entered the conversation.

She sighed to herself and picked up a pencil, amusing herself by doing the "rubber pencil" trick. Tsunade wouldn't be in for another half-hour, so she had to find something to do. Maybe she could find Shizune and bother her for a while.

Suddenly, there was an odd clicking sound. Sakura wasn't sure if she heard it at first, but then, when she stopped moving to listen closely, she heard it again. It was quiet, and she was sure it was a click, not a tap or anything else. It sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

There it was again! This time, it sounded like it was coming from the window. Sakura couldn't be sure, but that's almost definitely where it sounded like it was coming from. She slid carefully to her feet shoving a hand into the skirt pocket of her nurse's uniform to grip a kunai. It wasn't required for medic-nin to carry weapons in a hospital, but Sakura knew better. Sometimes you could accidentally bring in the enemy for a surgery and not even know it until they had a scalpel to your throat.

She stepped closer and closer to the window until her nose was almost pressed into the glass. Her eyes darted around and she felt her stomach begin to tighten in fear. It was a familiar feeling. Familiarity usually brought with it a kind of soothing comfort in uncomfortable situations, like hearing a familiar voice in a foreign country, or seeing dolphins out at sea. But there was nothing comforting about the familiar sense of fear and nervousness that seeped into her belly.

"Sakura?"

Sakura gave a startled cry and whipped around with her kunai in her hand, ready to strike. She relaxed, however, once she saw it was just Shizune standing there.

"Um, are you okay?" Shizune asked, giving the pink-haired girl an odd look. "You seem… tense."

"Sorry," Sakura grumbled, slipping her kunai back into her pocket. "I just thought I heard something outside."

"Oh."

Shizune didn't seem to want to press the issue, and Sakura was a little relieved. The last thing she needed was to frighten away poor Shizune by talking crazy about odd clicking noises coming from outside.

"Anyway," Shizune said after a moment. "I was wondering if you could assist me in surgery. Er – wait, you're on desk duty, aren't you?"

Sakura bit her lip. Truth be told, she regretted asking Tsunade to put her on desk duty. She would have to see if she could get Tsunade to renege that later, because she forgot how boring desk work could be when that was all you had to do, day in and day out. "I can help," she finally said, smiling. "I have to talk to Tsunade-sama about desk duty later anyway. What kind of surgery is it?"

"Well, I need to take out a lodged shuriken, but it's in a rather difficult place…"

-

It turned out the lodged shuriken was stuck very close to the femoral artery in the man's leg, and Shizune needed Sakura to gently pull the artery to the side while Shizune removed the weapon. If she had tried to do it by herself, the artery would most certainly have been severed, and the man was as good as dead.

"Thanks," Shizune said, soaping up her hands in the sink after the surgery. "Your hands are very steady, and you have a keen eye."

Sakura couldn't help but blush. It wasn't often she received praise for something as simple as pulling an artery out of the way. Sure, there were nurses that could have done it, but Sakura knew that if anything were to go awry, they wouldn't have her exceptional chakra control to try and heal the damage done.

Shizune was rinsing her hands now. "Sakura, can I ask you a question?" she asked, running her forearms under the warm water.

Sakura got an odd feeling. She was pretty sure her question wasn't going to be, 'How do you get your hair so vibrant?'

"If you had been examining Gai instead of Kakashi the other day…" Shizune began.

Sakura choked. "I beg your pardon?"

"…would you have acted the same?"

"Shizune… did Tsunade tell you?"

"Yes, sorry… she thought it was a little amusing. She mentioned something about old men and erections."

Sakura felt a little sting of betrayal, but quickly brushed it aside. It was just Shizune, another medic. Tsunade could have blabbed to far worse people. Ino, for example. At least Shizune would always have the decency not to mention the little Kakashi mishap to anyone else outside of their little hospital trio.

"So?" Shizune pressed, looking over her shoulder at Sakura, whose delicate pale complexion was now flushed pink. "Would you have acted the same?"

Sakura squirmed. "Well… it would be weird… so… I guess."

"What if it was Naruto?"

"If it was Naruto? Well, it'd be weird too, but he's a good friend, so it wouldn't be _that_ bad. Plus, he's always had a crush on me, so it would be easily explained… that, and he also frequently horny…"

"But… isn't Kakashi a friend too?"

Sakura didn't know what to say to that. There were some days when the former student-teacher bond was very defined and obvious, and other days where that line was heavily blurred. He often went from being a teacher to being a friend and back again so fast that Sakura really wasn't sure what he was. Was he a friend who also happened to be a former teacher? Or a former teacher who was now her friend? Or was he just a friend now?

Of course, he might have merely been her former teacher. That answer seemed much easier to believe, but it was a little depressing to think that Kakashi only thought of her as some girl he used to teach in the past.

"Well?" Shizune repeated. "Is he or isn't he?"

Sakura looked almost dejected. When she really thought hard about it, would she have felt _this_ uncomfortable if she was friends with Kakashi? "I don't… I don't think so," she finally said, quietly. "He's just… an acquaintance."

Some say that the truth brings comfort, but Sakura honestly couldn't say she agreed.

* * *

AN: Feedback is very much appreciated, whatever kind. I'm in a good mood because of my new yaoi manga and Sephiroth plushie, so nothing can bring me down! How many of you went to Anime North this year? 


	5. We need to talk

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

AN: Sorry it took a while, but both my beta and I have been busy the past couple of weeks. But to relax, I just saw POTC3 twice this weekend. Best weekend ever! Does anyone else miss Scruffington? I was mad they stuck him with the white wig again, but he's still got a nice little niche in my heart despite that. If you like my story, give me a life-size Norrington doll and I'll love you forever.

* * *

Sakura wasn't sure how the picture on the flag looked like a drunken pelican. It was clearly an egret with a sailor hat holding a bottle of sake. Ino must have been drunk when she was looking at that flag, which begged the question: why was Ino drunk before she even entered the bar?

It was a seedy place, not a place Sakura would have chosen to go had she been the one to make the decision. But Ino always had to have things her way. As she moved closer to the bar, bathed in gaudy neon lights, she could hear raucous singing inside.

"Geez, is the whole damn bar having a sing-a-long?" she wondered aloud.

She had gone there almost right after work. Tsunade had kept her busy doing paperwork for the rest of the afternoon, and was a little more than amused when Sakura confessed that she had been foolish in asking for so much deskwork to keep her mind off one little incident, and immediately afterwards requested that she be taken off of temporary desk duty.

"Got over it fast, did you?" Tsunade had said, her eyes twinkling.

Sakura had hesitated in her reply. Truthfully, she still hadn't quite gotten over it, but she wasn't sure if admitting that to the Godaime would do her much good. Luckily for her, Tsunade had continued before she got a chance to properly answer the question.

"Fine, you can go back to your usual routine. But you're stuck doing deskwork for today, since I already had some things planned out for you…"

It wasn't a bad day; it just was just very busy later in the afternoon. A hectic afternoon might have been a bad day in some people's books, but Sakura would rather have too much paperwork to do in too little time, rather than too many life-or-death surgeries. As long as nobody died while she was taking care of things, she always felt she had a relatively good day.

It was so busy, though, that she stayed for much longer than she meant to without even realizing it. It turned out that Tsunade had boxes and boxes of files that needed to be updated in accordance with her recent notes. Sakura had spent her entire shift (and then some) copying things out and trying to interpret her mentor's chicken-scratch writing with barely any time to eat or take a washroom break. By the time she looked at the clock, she realized it was already seven in the evening, and she was hungry, thirsty, and tired. She was in no mood to head out to a bar with Ino, but she knew there would be hell to pay if she didn't, so she really didn't have a choice.

She just hoped her friend would understand if she decided to go home early. Sleep was a precious thing in the life of a medic.

Sakura pulled the door open and stepped inside.

Through the thick haze of smoke, she could see the outline of about five or six people gathered at a table, laughing and singing. It came as a slight surprise to see it was Ino, surrounded by several young, handsome shinobi, all of them singing at the top of their lungs some drunken rendition of a popular song that seemed to play on the radio all the time these days. Leading the group in singing was Ino, who was also conducting dramatically.

Sakura didn't even know why she was surprised. Maybe it was because she fully expected Ino to be drunk already, but she didn't think she would ever lower her inhibitions _this_ much. At least she wasn't dancing naked on the table… yet.

"Hey," greeted Shikamaru. When she looked towards him, she saw Chouji there too, nodding his head grimly. Sakura didn't even see them; they were sitting at a smaller table just beside Ino's larger one, looking almost dejected. She went over and slid into a chair, her back to the wildly conducting blonde girl.

"Been here long?" she asked conversationally.

Shikamaru rolled his eyes. "What time is it now?"

"Around seven-thirty, maybe seven-forty-five," she replied, shrugging. "I think so, anyway."

"Then we've been here for two hours already."

Chouji grumbled. "And she's been singing for one of them. I think she's completely forgotten about us," he added almost resentfully.

Sakura glanced over her shoulder at Ino (who hadn't seemed to notice her arrival) and then turned back to the boys. She noticed, in the dim bar light, that Shikamaru was sporting a painful looking bruise on his left cheekbone. She winced. "Er – I guess Ino _did_ find you yesterday, huh?" she said, peering at the wound. "She must have been mad."

The lazy chuunin sighed. "Yep."

"I don't know why she gets so mad," Chouji was saying under his breath. After watching the drunken Ino for a moment, he threw back what remained of his drink – something that looked and smelled like whisky. Sakura wrinkled her nose at the scent of alcohol that wafted off of Chouji. "Shikamaru totally has the right to do what he wants, when he wants. She can't just expect him to hang around if she's not even going to pay attention to him," Chouji continued sourly. He sniffed in the direction of Shikamaru's cocktail and eyed the drink greedily.

Shikamaru snorted. "You mean like she's doing now?" he said, sliding the drink across the table to his chubby friend.

"Exactly," Chouji said, plucking the straw from the glass and chucking it behind him. It hit a nearby ninja in the nose as he was busy trying to kiss a waitress half to death.

"Watch it!" the man snarled, prying his lips from the woman's and throwing a deadly glare at Chouji. Sakura briefly looked at the woman and saw that her disgustingly large breasts were almost falling out of her impossibly low-cut shirt. She blushed and looked away in case the waitress suffered a wardrobe malfunction of some kind.

Chouji puffed himself up and gave him a look that was equally as dangerous. "Or what?" he snapped. "You'll kiss me to death too? I'm a jounin, buddy, what are you going to do?"

The man looked as though he was about to say something nasty in response, but pursed his lips and turned back to the waitress. Apparently, he decided that picking a fight with a heavyweight jounin was a bad idea. Seconds later, the man and the waitress gravitated to the other side of the smoggy bar and continued their little "session" there.

"If I didn't know that Ino would hunt me down if I tried to leave, I would have left already," Shikamaru mumbled, crossing his arms. "But she's fucking relentless."

"Amen, brother," Chouji chimed, guzzling down Shikamaru's cocktail and practically slamming the empty glass on the table. "I'm getting some more drinks. Anyone want anything?"

"Get me a… bottle of water," Shikamaru said lamely. "I'm going to use the mens' room, I'll be back in a bit."

"I'll have water too, Chouji," Sakura said with a faint smile. This bar had a very uncomfortable atmosphere. She watched the chubby ninja stand up and leave the table, her eyes following him until he blended into the crowd around the bar. When she turned back to the table, she was suddenly struck by how alone she was in the room full of people. Shikamaru had gone to the bathroom, Chouji went to get drinks, and Ino was too busy singing obnoxiously with her new friends, half of whom probably just wanted to get into her panties (assuming she decided to wear a pair tonight). Sakura was sitting, all alone, surrounded by tables that were nearly overstuffed with patrons. If there was ever a time to feel small and insignificant, it was now.

There was a blinding flash all of a sudden that lasted for a few milliseconds, and Sakura instinctively looked for the source. A few chuunin at another table were taking pictures of themselves being generally obnoxious, probably to show to their obnoxious friends who couldn't make it in the hopes that it would spur jealousy – or maybe even guilt at having missed a _really great time_.

Sakura didn't want to be there. She looked down at what she was wearing and felt decidedly out of place in her nurse's uniform. She just wanted to go home and change into some sweatpants and a t-shirt and go to bed in her actual bed, not on her couch, where she would mostly likely dream of being at the hospital, treating Ino for alcohol poisoning and scolding her for being so pushy and demanding all the time.

A sudden presence at her table made itself very aware to Sakura, and she snapped her gaze up to meet… Kakashi's.

"Sensei!" she cried. "What the hell?"

"Language," he berated cheerfully. "I came to lend you that book."

Sakura's mouth gaped open like she was a fish out of water as a moderately thick book was dumped into her hands. Kakashi had said that he would bring it by the hospital, but she wasn't holding him to his word, honestly. After she ran off yesterday, she hadn't been expecting to see him at all for a little while, but she was wrong.

In any case, this was clearly not the hospital.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded in a quiet, nervous voice.

Kakashi blinked. "I came to lend you that book," he repeated matter-of-factly, gesturing to the tome she was now holding.

"A little late, aren't you?" she said, tossing the book on the table in front of her. "My shift at the hospital ended a while – ah." Sakura gave a wry smile. Kakashi was always late for everything, not just training sessions and physical examinations. It figured he would be late in bringing a stupid book by.

"Ah?" he echoed.

"Nothing." She looked away as a deep blush swept over her face. This was embarrassing, a little. It was mere luck he hadn't asked her why she ran away so suddenly the day before. She wasn't sure how she would explain her way out of that one.

"So anyway," he said, raising his eyebrows and politely surveying the bar. She thought she saw a flicker of disdain cross what she could see of his face before his gaze settled on her once more. "I came for another reason too."

Sakura frowned miserably. She was in for it now, she thought. Even though Kakashi didn't seem the type to take pleasure in another's humiliation, she was absolutely sure he wouldn't let her forget the day she literally ran from her own juvenile problems. She knew exactly what he would say, too – she could hear Kakashi's voice chastising her in her own head. 'Sakura, you're eighteen! Stop playing the evasion game!', and 'Sakura, when are you going to grow up and start acting like an adult?'

Or maybe that was just her guilt making its opinion known using her former sensei's voice. Damn dirty tricks.

She never did get to find out what that other reason was. At that moment, Ino seemed to have noticed Sakura sitting there through her thick haze of drunkenness and swung around awkwardly. "Hey! Forehead! Your hair is like a lighthouse beacon, you know?" Ino said loudly. Sakura stiffened at being addressed by her drunken friend and grimaced, not even turning around. She really did not like being around Ino when she was drunk.

Sakura sent Kakashi a vaguely apologetic look, at which he just tilted his head slightly in amusement. She hoped that if she just pretended she didn't hear Ino (which was impossible seeing as she was extremely obnoxious and would not have needed a megaphone even to yell commands at teammates two kilometers away), she would assume that she got the wrong person – after all, there had to be more than just one person in Konoha with pink hair, right? – and just turn back to entertaining the boys that surrounded her.

Ino, however, did not take kindly to being ignored no matter who happened to be ignoring her, even when her drunken stupor barely allowed for cohesive thought. Still convinced it was Sakura, she whipped out a slender, sweaty arm, hooking her hand around Sakura's throat and pulling hard. Sakura gave a loud yelp of protest and jerked back. Her arms flailed wildly in a futile attempt to keep herself balanced on her teetering chair, but eventually both girls went tumbling to the floor with a disconcerting 'thud', followed by the crashing of their chairs. Kakashi winced. That did not sound very good.

He peered under the table to see what had become of Sakura and Ino.

They were lying on the floor, skirts riding a bit high and arms entangled around each other awkwardly, expressions of shock on their faces like they'd just been caught fondling each other in public.

_Easy, boy,_ Kakashi admonished himself lightly.

Sakura was nothing short of humiliated. Her legs were splayed apart, one crushed uncomfortably between Ino's thighs. She had twisted after realizing that she was clutching Ino around the shoulders, and tried to push herself up and push her skirt down, all at the same time.

Ino was a little less modest. She looked down at her legs, most of which were brazenly bared to everybody, and gave a loud bark of laughter, waving off her fall like it was no big deal.

Sakura's facial expression showed that she was thinking the exact opposite of Ino at the moment. She was wearing a blush that could easily rival the intensity of her hair, and she was rubbing her aching throat miserably. It wasn't everyday that your best friend decided to grab you around the throat and drag you to the ground in the middle of a crowded bar.

Just then, Chouji came back with two bottles of water in one hand, and another glass of brown liquid, filled almost to the brim. "Sorry it took so long," he said. "I had a bit of a disagreement with the bartender over how much really constitutes 'a glass' and – eh? Kakashi-sama?"

Chouji's small eyes took in the sight of Kakashi, sitting at their table with his hands clasped in front of him, giving him an inquisitive look.

"I just dropped by to see Sakura," Kakashi said. "And I was actually going to – "

"I'm going home," Sakura announced, interrupting Kakashi and grumbling irritably. If Kakashi thought she was rude, he politely kept his mouth shut about it.

Chouji looked surprised. "But I just got you some water…"

She studied the water in his hand and then grabbed one of the bottles. "Well, because you're a nice person, I'll take the water, but it will be coming home with me. Tell Shikamaru I've gone too."

Chouji nodded almost mournfully. "Well… I suppose it's for the best. Man, I wish I could leave now, but somebody's got to make sure nothing bad happens to our dear blonde princess over there," he said, jerking a thumb towards Ino, who had one leg up on the table and seemed to be pointing out various scars to her male entertainees. Predictably, they didn't mind.

"I'm sure one bad thing wouldn't kill her," Sakura mumbled. "Might even knock some sense into that fat head of hers."

"What?" Chouji made a face. "I didn't catch that."

"Nothing."

Sakura couldn't consciously recall a time before now when she moved so fast just to be out of a place that almost made her literally sick. But there was a first for everything, obviously.

-

Sakura was nearly at her wits' end when it came to Ino. She honestly didn't know of anyone else (personally) who found the greatest pleasure in torturing one's body by consuming bathtubs of alcohol. Honestly, she just never understood the need for the stuff. Her life was chaotic enough, and she didn't need the trouble of worrying whether her liver was doing its job properly or not. Alcohol, she found, was probably the only thing people would willingly consume to the point where they would throw up, and then do it all again the next day. All she knew was that if she ate a bad piece of pork and started throwing up, she would not be in any hurry to eat pork again.

_Damn masochistic jerks,_ she grumbled to herself.

She also couldn't say she was really surprised, though. In a village where you constantly rang Death's doorbell, throwing up after a night of alcohol consumption probably seemed pretty tame.

For a moment, she entertained the visual of a generic Konoha ninja (who seemed almost Kakashi-esque in appearance) running up to a large mansion, ringing the doorbell, and running away just before the Grim Reaper opened the door in a fuzzy pink bathrobe and said, "Hello?"

But soon after, she was back in a foul mood. She really, _really_ didn't like that Ino kept doing that kind of thing. As a medic, she knew just how harmful alcohol could be to one's body, but far be it from her to actually point this out to her sake-soaked friend. What Ino did on her own time was really none of her business, even if they were best friends, but it was when Ino pulled stunts like forcing her to come out at night (and grabbing her around the throat too) that she started losing it. Ino _knew_ she hated alcohol, and yet she always insisted on spending her after-hours in a bar or some such thing. Sakura knew that if she really wanted to keep this friendship – and she did, really – she would have to go out and meet Ino halfway. Or, all the way, actually, seeing as Ino couldn't seem to get over this notion that she was, as Chouji put it, a _blonde princess_. God forbid she would actually volunteer to go to the park or Ichiraku with Sakura and just talk about nothing. Neither of them had done that for years. At least not together.

Sometimes she would sit at home after another bar outing with Ino and wonder if she was lame. She never drank anything but water when she went out to a bar, despite persistent prodding on Ino's part to "just try one, I promise you'll like it". She would go home and think that maybe she should have tried something, that maybe after her first drink she would magically understand its appeal, and that it would suddenly suffocate her doubts about herself and her life and take away all her stress.

The next day, though, she didn't usually regret not having a drink. She would wake up, refreshed and free of vomit and hangover, ready to work and patch up battered jounin and reckless genin all over again.

Sakura knew, deep down, that she didn't really want to drink. She was probably just reacting to the knowledge of being the only ninja who didn't make a regular habit of bar-hopping, and it bothered her a little, despite constantly reassuring herself that she was a well-adjusted young lady. Still, sometimes she just wanted to ditch her responsibilities and do something wild and crazy, like Ino was so prone to doing all the time.

Of course, her mind always rationed afterwards that there was a time and place for that sort of thing, usually between the hours of nine and eleven p.m. almost any day of the week, provided she didn't have a shift at six a.m. the next morning or an evening shift the night in question. And she definitely couldn't be drinking herself silly if she was on call either, in case there was an emergency surgery that one of the other medics or Tsunade needed help with. It certainly wouldn't do to have double vision if you're trying to pull weapon fragments out of somebody's chest.

And the rest of the time she would be working. When she also wasn't being Ino's doormat, of course.

Sakura could feel the muscles in her body tightening substantially the more she thought about Ino and her bossy, demanding, meddlesome ways. Friend or no, there were some things that just pissed Sakura off. She felt herself getting tenser as the seconds dragged by, and her chakra was coiling tightly like a pressed bedspring until, all of a sudden, her foot lashed out and she kicked a large rock (boulder, really) that was lying at the side of the road. The release of her chakra at the same time as the impact of her foot sent it flying several hundred feet into the air and away from her in a perfect arc, straight into the Hokage monument, where it collided into the carved crater of Tsunade's nose and got stuck. She swallowed heavily.

Oh great. Now it looked like the rocky Tsunade had a booger hanging out of her nose, and it was all because of a moment of blind fury. Maybe she should have aimed better… or just aimed in general.

She sighed and continued all the way home.

-

Sakura didn't sleep well that night. It could have been that she was restless, or that her mind was replaying the day over and over again, or even the fact that there was a lump in her mattress that had not been there before – at least, not that she remembered.

Or it could have been the fact that at 2:33am, Ino decided to stop over for a visit.

She was clearly inebriated and positively reeked of beer and sake as she leaned in the doorway, trying to focus her watery eyes on Sakura, who was holding the door open, a look of both irritation and surprise on her face.

"Haruno," Ino slurred. "I've got a pick to bone with you."

Sakura ignored that statement and yawned.

"Ino, why are you here at…" – she checked the wall clock – "…two thirty in the morning?!"

Ino pushed her way into the apartment, shrugging off a jacket Sakura didn't recognize. It looked far too big for Ino; the sleeves were rolled up so that she was not _completely_ engulfed in it, but despite rolling up the sleeves, they still came down to her wrists and the length of the jack fell down to her mid-thigh.

"Where do you get off ignoring me all evening?" Ino demanded suddenly, shuffling over to the couch before tripping and gracelessly falling face-first onto it with a muffled, 'oof'. She rolled over awkwardly and glared at Sakura – or rather, she glared at a spot about three inches to the left of Sakura.

Sakura sighed. "Nothing I say to you is going to get through while you're drunk," she said, trying to sound as calm and rational as possible, but once she saw Ino in her doorway and listened to her accusatory tone and watched her thanklessly invade her apartment, she felt her anger swelling again.

"Oh, that's rich!" came Ino's haughty reply as she sat up. She swayed dangerously for a couple of seconds before righting herself and glaring a little bit to the right of Sakura this time.

"Well, what then? Did you ignore me just for fun? Or were you too busy flirting with Kakashi-sama to pay attention to me?"

Sakura sighed. She felt the strong desire to massage her temples, but wondered if that would have been redundant. "Ino…" she practically ground out at her blonde friend. "I – "

Inner Sakura snorted. _You what? Are you going to tell her what a horrible and selfish friend she's being? You think she's going to remember your angry rant in her state of mind? What good will reprimanding her do if she's not going to remember it?_

Inner Sakura had a point.

Ino was never going to get a clue if she was drunk while Sakura tried venting, so she just shut her mouth and refused to say another word. Feeling miserable for not being able to express herself emotionally to her friend, Sakura started down the hallway to her bedroom again. Let Ino have the couch – why not? Ino might have been annoying, irritating, drunk, selfish, and ego-centric, but she was still her friend, and no matter what Sakura did or what Ino did or what anyone did, nothing was going to change that.

She had just reached her bedroom door when Ino's voice floated down the hallway, sounding weak and tired.

"Urgh… I think I'm going to be sick…"

Sakura froze for a split second before turning back and rushing to her friend's side. God forbid any vomit got on the furniture…

She felt momentarily guilty for worrying more about the furniture than Ino, but managed to deflect some of the shame by focusing on hauling her friend to her feet and helping her stumble along to the bathroom. Ino was about a foot away from the toilet when she decided to vomit all over the floor. Immediately afterwards, the blonde's knees bluckled and she crumpled to the ground near her puddle of vomit.

Sakura sighed and rubbed her friend's back. This was going to be a long night.

-

Kakashi yawned and looked at the clock beside his bed. It was nearly noon. He'd spent a couple of hours in the bar after Sakura left last night, reading quietly while Chouji and Shikamaru grumbled and sipped their drinks and Ino sang on as if she hadn't choked Sakura earlier or spent the night ignoring everybody but the young ninja sitting around her.

He was actually rather pleased; his little outing to the bar was perfect for reading his _Icha Icha_ book. It was noisy enough (because eerie silence always distracted him somewhat), and there was a light hanging almost right above his head, and he also had the bonus of sitting with a couple of depressed young ninja who were suffering from an intense alcohol buzz. It was very easy for him (not to mention convenient) to order a drink and slide the bill towards Chouji or Shikamaru. All in all, he'd gotten a fair bit of reading done and he was rather proud of himself.

It was just before he decided to leave that he noticed Sakura had left the book behind. The one he'd brought just for her as payment for borrowing money from her. He remembered making a sound of disapproval as he lifted the book carefully from the table and regarded it disdainfully.

Well, if she didn't want it, all she had to do was politely decline his offer – of course, that still didn't mean he was going to pay her back for the money he owed. He just thought, for once, that he would do a kind and charitable thing by lending her the only book in his apartment that he'd never once opened or used.

Actually, that wasn't true. He did use it as a coaster once, but that was a couple of years ago. He'd bought an actual coaster since then.

Kakashi stretched, hearing several consecutive cracks along his spine as he arched his body. A good stretch was like a mild form of good sex, he always felt. You could feel your body being pushed to the limit, and it _felt so good_, and then there was the gratifying release, where every single muscle seems to just let go and you can't help but sigh in bliss. He lay in bed for about ten minutes afterwards, contemplating whether or not to get up or go back to sleep. His bed was very comfortable, he had to admit, but he still had about forty-seven pages of his book to finish, and his book was unfortunately sitting, dog-eared, on his coffee table in the other room.

And he also had to pee, which he couldn't do in his bed (and hadn't done since he was four – he refused to count that other time involving the basin of warm water).

He let out a long exhale and made his decision.

After spending thirty minutes in the shower, twenty minutes trying to get his hair to look properly ruffled and unkempt, fifteen minutes dressing himself, and another thirty minutes snacking on a bowl of cornflakes without any milk, Kakashi finally made his way out the door, book in hand and face in book. He ambled down the street towards his favourite reading spot: the thick middle branches of a tall cherry blossom tree. He stopped only once to stare questioningly at a large boulder wedged in the nostril of the Godaime's face in the mountain which he definitely remembered hadn't been there the day before. He concluded, nodding to himself that it must have been another of Naruto's pranks – that boy was _always_ up to something – and then continued on his way.

But when he got there, he was a little surprised to see a pink-haired girl sitting in the shade of the tree, a look of utmost displeasure on her face as she tossed another crumpled piece of origami paper into a growing pile beside her.

"Ah… Sakura." Kakashi lowered his book just as Sakura looked up at him. So much for spending a quiet day alone in a tree. He continued, "What a nice surprise."

Sakura stared at him for a while, her hand resting on a piece of red paper while a book lay open, weighed down at the corners by a few carefully chosen rocks. "Kakashi-sensei," she greeted almost mournfully, frowning. "I didn't expect you to be here."

"Hm. Sadly, expectations set are rarely met," he replied cryptically. But whether he was referring to her not expecting him, or him not expecting her, she didn't know.

Sakura looked up into his eye to see if she could somehow read it to see what he meant. She wished he didn't always wear that stupid mask, or pull his hitai-ate down so low that it covered the sharingan. It was hard to take cues from his facial expression when all you could see was his one eye.

In any case, despite not knowing whether he was pleased to see her or not, she was a little relieved that he had found her. It saved her the trouble of finding him later.

"Kakashi-sensei," she began, chewing on her lip and setting the paper aside, under a flat rock. "I think we need to talk."

* * *

AN: Next update soon, hopefully. We'll see what life hands us. Meanwhile, I'll just kidnap Norrington -- I mean, work on future chapters...


	6. Miscommunication

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

AN: Um, so yes, just a couple of things. Firstly, I _did_ change my penname. When you're dealing with me, you're dealing with an indecisive person, baby! Secondly, I apologize for the wait, but my beta and I had to make sure this chapter was perfect for you guys (or relatively perfect, lol). Thirdly, I promise that the Kakasaku action will begin to snowball from here on out.

As always, thanks to my "superbly fantastic-ness" beta, **Harrison J. Pecans**. (Couldn't resist, I'm sort of hooked on 'Coupling'.)

* * *

Kakashi blinked at her. Those were probably the words he least expected to hear coming out of her mouth, seeing as she had taken flight the other day when he brought it up.

"Talk, huh?" he said after a moment. There was a long pause in which neither of them moved, only stared at each other in silence as if daring the other to speak. Finally, Kakashi sighed and slipped his book back into his hip pouch. He'd been expecting to have this talk with Sakura. In fact, he had prepared an explanation the other day when he purposely "bumped into her" at the sweet shop.

He didn't like sweets. Well, he didn't mind strawberry uiro, but that was probably the only thing he could tolerate without feeling excessively sick. That day, he'd been mulling over how best to explain what happened during his exam without being redundant and awkward, and just when he thought he had figured it out – _"Sakura, as you know, you're not a young girl anymore…"_ – she ran away from him before he could get a word in.

If Sakura had known that he didn't like sweets, she probably would have suspected that he had ulterior motives upon entering the sweet shop in the first place. People who don't like sweets don't buy them. Fortunately for him, she didn't know that – and that gave him a plausible excuse for being there so that he could talk to her about his medical mishap. After all he _was_ the adult in this situation.

Well, Sakura was an adult now too, actually…

_She certainly doesn't have a child's body anymore._

He sighed. That was exactly the kind of thinking that got him into this situation in the first place.

Now it seemed he was getting his big chance to explain himself, but he couldn't remember what exactly he had been planning to say now. _"Sakura, you know you're not a young girl anymore…"_ And? _"…and as such, sometimes the male subconscious develops these fantasies, you see…"_ Oh, but that sounded like he was admitting to having fantasies about her. Maybe he'd better reword that…

Sakura stared at Kakashi as he stood beside her. Of course, the first thing anyone noticed about Kakashi besides his hair and his mask was probably his height. He was remarkably tall, and Sakura noticed just now that his posture was very slightly slouched. His eye looked unfocused, like he was deep in thought about something – or he might faint. Either one.

"So anyway," she said tensely, clearing her throat. "Maybe you should sit."

Kakashi's eye suddenly refocused itself on her face for a brief second before he quickly looked away at something off in the distance and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Ah, I think I'll stand," he said lightly. "Sitting on the ground isn't so good for my aging joints, you know. I have a difficult time getting back up."

Sakura snorted and looked him up and down skeptically. "Right. I can tell you've been suffering from aching joints for years, sensei."

Kakashi hummed tunelessly to himself. "Ever since I was twenty," he replied, his eye crinkling in a smile.

Sakura sighed and allowed a small grin to play at her lips. "You know, I really think you should sit down," she said quietly. "This is probably not going to be a short talk. You'd better make yourself comfortable."

Kakashi looked mildly surprised. He wasn't sure how talking about an erection during a medical exam was supposed to take a long time. He figured it would go something like, _"Hey, so you know it's just what happens to men sometimes, don't you, Sakura?" She would nod understandingly and sympathetically at this and say, "Oh, yes, sensei, I'm a medic. I know all about erections." He would go on, "And you understand that sometimes when a pretty girl touches a man there, even if it's just for a medical exam, sometimes it will _come to attention_, right?" She would continue nodding, "Of course, sensei," she would say. "But I'm not a girl anymore, I'm a woman. Please, let me show you…" And then Sakura would slowly unbutton –_

Kakashi suddenly swallowed hard and looked sharply to the girl sitting on the ground near him. He had not been expecting that scenario to turn into something x-rated. It wasn't exactly a bad thing, he supposed. After all, she was blossoming quite well… but the fact that she was sitting _right there_ made him feel especially guilty.

Sakura mistook his sudden rigid posture as a silent refusal to sit down. Maybe he didn't like the grass tickling him, she thought wryly. "Anyway," she said. She figured it was better just to get everything out of the way now, or this conversation would go nowhere. "Um… it _is_ okay for me to talk to you about this, right? I mean, if it's not okay, I can go talk to Naruto or something… although I'm not sure how much help he would be… but you just seem like the best person to talk to about this…"

Kakashi's eye widened as she babbled on. "Talk to Naruto…?" he echoed. He didn't think she would actually discuss this sensitive matter with such an insensitive brute – and wasn't she bound by the medical privacy act anyway? "Er… isn't that… private information?" he asked worriedly, giving her an apprehensive look.

She knit her brows, looking confused. "Private? But everyone knows about it… I mean, it was never really a secret in the first place…"

Kakashi's heart nearly skipped a beat. "Uh… what?"

Sakura concluded that they were not on the same wavelength. "Well, yes," she continued. "Everybody knows that Ino drinks heavily… but… what were you talking about?"

He didn't need to say anything, he just sent her a darkly significant look – but even that was unnecessary. As soon as she asked the question, her eyes widened in realization and a berry pink blush stained her cheeks. "Oh, _that_," she murmured, looking embarrassed.

"Yes," he replied. "_That_."

"I don't really want to talk about that right now."

"I thought that's what we were going to talk about. I didn't realize you had other _pressing_ issues."

Sakura's eyes widened. "Pressing?"

Both of them looked at each other awkwardly. "I didn't mean to say it like that… perhaps I should rephrase," Kakashi grunted after a moment of contemplation. "I didn't realize you had _other things_ on your mind."

"…Things?"

Kakashi was beginning to look a bit annoyed. "Now you're just being ridiculous," he mumbled.

Sakura's mouth gaped open like she was a fish out of water. "What? I'm not being ridiculous!" she protested. "I can't help it! You keep saying things like you mean something else! It's not my fault what you say can be easily misconstrued…"

"That, and you're young," Kakashi supplied. "Of course your mind would jump to something inappropriate. Raging hormones, you know."

Sakura ignored the 'raging hormones' part and grinned triumphantly. "Exactly. So it's not my fault, really."

"Then again," Kakashi said quietly, looking away and shifting his weight on the balls of his feet. "You're not _that_ young anymore…"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Kakashi took a while returning her gaze. When he finally did, he spoke at the same time. "I'm just saying… that the reason I got a – well, you know – at the hospital… it was because – "

Sakura looked very uncomfortable, and shrank back almost defensively. "I know," she said quickly, interrupting him. "Those kinds of things happen. It's not the first time it's happened, so you don't have to explain…"

"Oh?" He looked genuinely surprised to hear this. "I didn't know that… I thought…"

He thought he'd traumatized her for life, that's what he thought. She had acted so embarrassed, so flustered, like she'd never dealt with that kind of situation before. Of course, he mistakenly assumed…

She sighed tiredly at him, shaking her head. "You're only human, just like every other male in Konoha," she said.

Even though this was true, she felt odd saying it – almost like she was a dirty liar. When she was younger, Kakashi always seemed mechanical, incapable of defeat and unsusceptible to human weaknesses like silly emotions. Even on those rare occasions he was beaten and hospitalized, she never thought of him as a person. That was probably the main reason she was so uncomfortable with his accidental erection the other day. _Emotionally detached teachers do not get aroused when a former student is touching them there._ That was a given.

Kakashi seemed to relax a little bit, and he gave her a wary look. "Sometimes I forget how mature you can be… at times," he admitted. As an afterthought, he added, "You know, when you're not running away."

Sakura opened and closed her mouth a few times in shock, and Kakashi saw her becoming slowly infuriated. "I… Kakashi-sensei, I didn't want – you can't expect me to… honestly…"

"Yes, that's exactly what I thought," Kakashi replied dryly, smirking behind his mask.

She glowered at him. "Well, what did you expect me to do?" she asked haughtily, crossing her arms.

He shrugged. "Oh, I don't know… talked to me, maybe? Resolved our issues?"

"I don't need to!"

Kakashi's eye glinted in amusement. "Right," he said. "Because we've clearly resolved our issues about my – thing."

Sakura continued to glare at him, looking irritated. "You mean erection?" she snapped. "_Why_ can't you say erection?"

"I'm no medic-nin," he replied airily. "I've no idea what all this medical nonsense means."

She sighed. "But… everyone knows what an erection is," she reasoned. "You _know_ what it is. I mean, you couldn't have been so oblivious that the first time it happened to you that – uh… you…" She trailed off, looking increasingly embarrassed. When he raised en eyebrow curiously, she blushed harder and looked away. "Never mind," she mumbled. "I'm not even going there…"

Kakashi shrugged. "Suit yourself. But you're missing out, Sakura. My pubescent years were just full of – "

She groaned. "Please, don't say e– "

"…exciting stories and adventures?" he finished, shrugging. "Okay."

Sakura grumbled something under her breath that Kakashi didn't catch, and he decided it probably wasn't that important anyway so he didn't press the issue. A slight breeze blew through Konoha at that moment, rustling the big cherry blossom tree they were under. Petals floated to the ground, twirling; Sakura thought they looked like small ballerinas, dancing on the wind. Kakashi noticed that the brilliant pink matched Sakura's hair. Some of the crumpled up origami paper tumbled away with the wind. Neither of them made a move to collect the failed art projects.

"Kakashi-sensei," Sakura said, frowning after a moment of silence passed. "When you were my age… what did you do when you thought you and a friend were growing apart?"

Kakashi looked at her for a moment. Sakura looked so sad; she was looking at her hands in her lap, examining them half-heartedly with furrowed brows and worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. Watching her, he felt a pang of sympathy. Even though they were no longer part of the same team, she, like Sasuke and Naruto, was still a part of him that he couldn't replace.

She could literally feel her heartbeat in her chest as the seconds ticked by. _There, I said it. I'm discussing my problems about Ino._ Starting to talk about it, though, brought no comfort. As the silence grew between them, marred only by the occasional chirp of a songbird, Sakura became increasingly uncomfortable and started to fidget.

"When I was your age," Kakashi said all of a sudden. "I didn't have any friends left in Konoha."

Sakura snapped her gaze up to meet his, but his expression was not one of sad reminiscence like she expected. He looked like he didn't really care; like the statement was just a fact, nothing more. Just as she was about to ask him what happened to his friends, he pulled a hand out of his pocket and rubbed his neck idly. "This is about Ino, isn't it?" he asked.

As usual, Kakashi was right. She nodded. "I just needed someone to talk to…" she explained, a mild hint of desperation evident in her voice. "I don't know what to do anymore. Ino stresses me out a lot… When I'm not at the hospital, I'm always out at a bar with her, because that's all she ever _does_ – drink, drink, and drink some more! And she always gets completely hammered… I worry about her. Worrying about her keeps me up at night, Kakashi-sensei! And just when I think I might be able to get a decent amount of sleep, I worry about something else – the hospital, patients, Naruto, Sasuke… and then I can't get to sleep."

Kakashi nodded, noting that he didn't make it onto that list. "Have you tried telling her you don't want to go out?"

Sakura gave him a sharp look. "Ino doesn't know the meaning of the word 'no'. To her, yes means 'yes' and no means 'just kidding, of course I'll get drunk with you'."

"Hmm. I see."

Sakura stared at him. "…You see?" she echoed lamely. "That's it?"

"Ah, well, I'm afraid I don't have much experience dealing with this kind of thing…" Kakashi looked almost sheepish.

She frowned. "Obviously. Maybe I should have gone to Naruto… but he's not much better…"

"You know, maybe it's a good thing you've started origami," he pointed out, gesturing vaguely to the papers that were held down by a rock. "Focusing on something like that, instead of Ino or your work, might actually help you relax."

Sakura looked down at her origami materials and sighed, leaning down to study her book. "Yeah, I guess… but I get so frustrated when it doesn't turn out right." She looked back up at him. "It just stresses me out even more."

"It's not hard," he said somewhat cheerfully.

She shot him a withering look. "Yes, but you're a genius. It probably took you ten minutes to learn how to fold a paper crane."

"Seven," he corrected. "And I'm flattered. But really… it's not that difficult."

"You made it look so easy the other day."

"I learned how to fold a crane when I was a kid. I think I must have been nine. So, obviously, I've had years to practice my technique."

Sakura smiled. "Nine? Was it a stress reliever for you too?" she asked jokingly. She guessed it probably wasn't – what did a nine year old get stressed about? (Mind you, he was a child prodigy in a ninja village, but even so.) She figured it was probably an arts and crafts project.

"Not really," he responded, looking a little reminiscent. "I was folding them for my mother."

Sakura gaped at him for a moment, surprised to hear him mention anything about his family. She didn't know very much about him, and she certainly didn't think that she would be the one he would talk to about his parents. She was about to say something when he spoke rather abruptly.

"If you'd like, I can teach you how to fold a crane."

"Er – actually, that would be nice," she said honestly. Trying to do it on her own and failing repeatedly was beginning to get annoying. A little instruction here and there would come in handy.

He chuckled. "I still have that book I wanted to lend you. You left it at the bar last night."

"Oops…"

"In any case," he continued. "Since the book was my payment, I guess that means that you now owe – "

"What?" Sakura interrupted, narrowing her eyes. "I didn't agree to that in the first place – Ino did."

Kakashi mulled this over in his head. "Fine," he replied. "Then consider my origami lessons payment."

She scoffed. "Not _full_ payment."

"Why not?"

An idea popped into her head. "Tell me about your mother," Sakura demanded suddenly. "Then we'll be even."

There was a long pause as Kakashi stared at her almost suspiciously. Then, with a lazy shrug of his shoulders, he said, "Well, I'm sure I've got some ryo stashed in my apartment, so I can pay you back the rest…"

She wondered why he was so reluctant to talk about his mother. He was the one who mentioned her, after all. Most people didn't just bring something up on a whim. Usually, if somebody brought something up, you could be pretty sure that they were secretly hoping to discuss it. At least that's what Sakura had concluded after years of conversations with various people in the village. Apparently, though, Kakashi was the only person who brought up facts at random without the desire to discuss or elaborate. He was probably just weird – and that really came as no surprise.

Sakura wasn't going to force him to tell her about his mother. It really wasn't any of her business; she was merely curious. Finding out that Kakashi had a mother was another of those 'Kakashi-is-human?' moments that had to be verified, almost. Like if she didn't prolong the moment, she would start doubting that it had actually happened.

But maybe, with careful and gradual encouragement, he would begin to talk about his mother.

"Well, shall we?" Kakashi said suddenly, pulling her from her reverie. She blinked at him.

"Shall we what?"

"Well, I'm not about to go home, get that book, and come back here only to make a return trip later on," he explained with a dismissive wave of his hand. "It's too much walking for one day."

"Oh." Sakura started collecting her things, and then she realized – "Wait, Kakashi-sensei," she said, pausing to look up at him curiously. "Are you inviting me to your apartment?" She'd never been in his apartment before. It was odd that all of a sudden he would just invite her out of the blue…

He shrugged. "Not really. We can sit out on the steps. It's such a nice day."

Kakashi was still as elusive as ever, Sakura thought wryly.

-

The apartment was completely devoid of sound or human presence when Ino woke up. It was around noon, and at first she'd been startled to learn she wasn't in her own comfy bed – _I hope I didn't go home with one of those boys_, she thought – but then she realized she was in Sakura's bed, as there was a standing picture of Team Seven on the nightstand, as well as a glass of water and a couple of small pills. Accompanying it was a note that said, "Ino, these are for the headache you're probably suffering from right now. Love, Sakura."

Indeed, her head was pounding, and she groaned, cupping her face in her hands.

_What happened last night?_

_How did I get here?_

_Why am I in Sakura's bed?_

A sick feeling washed over her. Oh no. She couldn't have…

But her something in the back of her mind told her she did.

"Sakura… what have I done?"

* * *

AN: So what did you think? Remember: A review in the inbox is worth two in the... something. I'm just going to go read Harry Potter now.


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